One of the main arguments in the post that started this thread is that users choose operating systems and by implication MS became a defacto standard because users chose it.
This assumption, that users can choose the software they use, seems to be widely accepted. And we see in posts on both side of the argument where that is the case. I believe that this assumption is incorrect.
My point is that the majority of the software purchased is chosen for the users and not by the users. It is choosen by the corporations that buy the software.
I don't have (to much of) a problem with my employer dictating the hardware and software I use. I'd prefer to be able to make my own choices but so be it.
What I do have a problem with is that the overall number of choices is shrinking (bye bye BeOS) and thus in those situations where I do have the ability to make choices my options are becoming more and more limited.
And I find it truely evil that MS is abusing their monopoly position to further limit my choices.
Surely for this crowd there will be no problem in making the choice of what OS, browser, etc. to use or not to use.
I'm part of this crowd.
I cannot choose my OS at work. I cannot choose my browser at work. If fact, I can only use the corporate standard OS and apps. I not allowed (supposed) to install anything.
And this is the point. The users don't choose OS's, corporations do. And as MS's monopoly becomes more entrenched there will be fewer and fewer choices for OSes, applications, etc.
it was afterall the users that made Microsoft a Defacto.
Bzzt wrong.
Very few users in corporations get to choose the hardware and software they use. Since the majority of PCs are sold to corporations it was this that made MS defacto. And the users are FORCED to use what the corporation says.
But even if MS as defacto standard was a good thing (I don't think it is, but I'll assume it is for the moment) the fact that MS then used their defacto standard in one area to drive out competitors in another is by no means a good thing for users.
And that is the problem. MS has used their success to unfairly compete. And they continue to work limit choices to MS and MS only products via unfair business practises.
And I sure do not want to live in an MS only world.
I also think that the rats nest of wires connecting my A/V equipment sucks.
My current system has a digital cable signal coming in with analog out going to a ReplayTV which digitizes the signal to store on the hard drive and reconverts it to analog to send to the TV which has an internal line doubler which redigitizes it. (Along with a DVD player, a VCR, a CD changer, a cassette deck, a turntable, a receiver, a second receiver, eleven speakers, a CD player, a computer, a phone connection, and a power conditioner. And lots of cables.)
So I too look forward to a firewire type single cable system that keeps everything in the digital domain.
A firewire system of this type was demoed at the Consumer Electronics Show a couple of years ago. Only the greed and disrespect for their customers of the content companies has prevented it from showing up in your favorite electronics store.
But an all digital system need not have any copy protection.
If only there was an electronics company that had the balls to tell the content companies to stuff it.
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon.
1. It is assumed that I will infringe on the copyright holders intellectual property rights. Thus, I am being treated as a criminal. A rather disrepctful way to treat your customers.
2. My fair use rights are ignored and eliminated.
3. I am expected to pay and pay and pay. I find this outright greed offensive.
4. The ability to timeshift, which in the US was held by the supreme court to be legal, is being taken away. This sucks.
5. Further disrespect for your customers by crippling technology. This can be seen in the DVD region encoding system and in CD watermarking today. And in the future by not providing the best format (i.e. 480i vs 720p) or not allowing comercial skipping (available today via ReplayTV's 30 second skip button or via fast forward on Tivo and VCRs). I find this offensive as well.
My overall sense of the situation is that the 'content' companies care not for their customers but only for their bottom lines. Ignoring the fact that if you take care of the customer the bottom line will take care of itself.
And thus, because the content companies want to squeeze every last penny out of their users (think addicts) HDTV, high definition audio (SACD and DVD Audio), digital music (MP3 et al), TV via the web (think of a sporting event in hidef with hyperlinks to stats, player profiles, etc. Broad band's killer app?) have all been delayed.
So is it really that bad? I think so. The technology is there. Yet as with the VCR, (which became a cash cow for the movie industry), instead of embracing new technology and the new revenue streams it would create, they are fighting it every step of the way.
Record companies provide music via the popular CD format. These digitally encoded music files can easily be 'ripped' to a computer hard drive, facilitating the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials across computer networks.
Of course, CDs were widespread long before internet access, and most judges probably own a CD player, and are thus familiar with the format. But most judges (and politicians) have shown themselves to be clueless about the internet. And most have probably never played an MP3.
Keep in mind that these kind of things only make noise on TV and in the movies.
Depends on what you mean by "these kinds of things". The large fireball that was seen over Pennsylvania a few weeks ago "[i]n its final moments the fireball created a deafening sonic boom that shook the ground."
From a report from Sky and Telescope you can read here.
You're just one more person with an agenda claiming unrelated benefits for compliance... After reading this story, almost everyone will forget about it, because it's really not very important.
Perhaps you should stay more in tune with current events. Like the power crisis in California. Using less energy is not an unrelated but a pretty direct benefit.
The folks up in Clagary thought so, as you can read here. They expect significant savings in energy by changing to full cutoff light fixtures.
A similar law recently passed in Connecticut and another is awaiting the governer's signature in New York.
Light pollution also takes its toll on the environment in more subtle ways then wasted energy.
Scientists have now discovered that only when it's really dark can your body produce the hormone called melatonin. Melatonin fights diseases, including breast and prostate cancer.
"It turns off the cancer cells from growing," says Joan Roberts, a photo biologist.
But if there's even a little light around your bed at night, your melatonin production switches off.
"So there may be this natural way that Mother Nature has given us, that is, dark night to keep certain cancers under control," Roberts says.
Even watching TV turns on other immune system hormones that should be active only in
daytime. They get depleted, and you're more likely to get a cold.
Nature needs darkness, too. The immune systems of animals grow weak if there's artificial light at night."
Not getting cancer seems like a pretty significant benefit.
Light pollution also has adverse effects on migrating birds and plant life (the plants can't track the natural light curve and don't properly prepare for winter).
If you read a couple of posts up, I wrote, "..and I can back up my books (ever drop one in a pool, leave one on a plane?).", as one of the things that needs to be done to 'fix' what passes today for ebooks.
Of course there could be a spell check on the find command. Or wildcards. Or find similar. When I use my Franklin Spelling Ace and mispell a word I gives me a selection of correctly spelled words to choose from. I often use this feature to find out how to spell a word.
With paper, I can scan the previous and next hundred or so entries at a glance.
You're assuming an ebook won't do this. Or that there won't be a browse mode. I see no reason for there not to be, except maybe poor design. Even my aforementioned Franklin allows me to see previous and next dictionary entries. With a full screen ebook I would expect entire dictionary pages to be displayed. I'd also expect to be able to put in the first few letters of a word and go to the page of words beginning with those letters.
For me, ebooks will only work if they improve on the things paper books are good for. I expect that there will be some trade offs but overall ebooks will be better than paper books, in the same way word processing is an improvement over typing.
You don't like the current legal environment for intellectual propery, including ebooks. Me neither.
Of course there have been laws about paper books as well. Copyright was originally granted by the king to let you publish. The church had the list of forbidden books. In the US there are people that want Tom Sawyer and Harry Potter banded from school libraries.
Of course this has nothing to do with paper books or ebooks in and of themselves. But I could see story tellers arguing that they didn't need permission to tell their tales, so the hell with these new fanged paper things.
You don't like the current hardware. Me neither. Of course the first 'books' were done in stone (think rosetta stone, an early ASCII to EBCDIC type reference manual). Ok so mabye that is stretching it. But in the same fashion I don't think that computer screens or palm pilots deserve to be called ebooks. As far as I'm concerned the 'e' equivelant of a book hasn't been developed yet.
You don't like the current software. Me neither. But have you looked at old hand printed books? Yes some are gorgeous, clear text wonderful illustrations. But some are unreadable scribble.
You don't like poor service. Who does? But the experience of buying an ebook has little to do with the ebook itself. If I visited a book store with surly clerks, badly stocked shelves, damaged books I wouldn't shop there. But this has nothing to do with the books.
You don't like the current sales infrastructure. No browsing the stacks. No recommendations from clerks or fellow shoppers. I agree with you here. Amazon type user reviews just aren't the same. Is the trade off to be able to find any book ever published, download it, and start reading in minutes versus hours spent driving to the local bookstore and hoping they have it (I know, but I never call first) or days waiting for it to be delivered. I don't know, since we aren't there yet. I do like going to the bookstore. I also like the convenience of shopping on line.
So if you are arguing that the current state of the ebook leaves much to be desired I wholeheartedly agree. But we part company if you are saying that ebooks will never be as useful as paper books. Don't confuse the potential with the current implementation.
Of course, ebooks may not pan out. I think they will, but I've been wrong before.
How much would it cost to replace an ebook reader if you did the same to it?
That would of course depend on the cost of the reader.
The point is a valid one. I wouldn't want to loose a ten dollar book much less an expensive reader.
In other posts I made in this thread I've said that a reader should be in the gameboy price range. About fifty bucks or so. Still a significant amount to loose, but it won't break the bank.
10. Cheap. They should cost about the same as a gameboy. I don't want to worry about losing/breaking a several hundred dollar reader. I could deal with losing ~fifty bucks. I may also want several, one for text books and reference works, one for my scifi collection, one for each hobby, etc.
11. I should be able to back up ebooks. When I loose one of those cheap readers I don't want to be out a thousand books.
12. I should have remote access to my complete library. This is a result of numbers 3 and 11. If I need a book not currently installed in the reader that is on my back up server I should be able to get it.
13. A mechanism to share books. Today I can lend a book to a friend. I would want ebooks to have a lend function that gives the lendee access to a book for a predetemined length of time and that is copy protected.
I an a voracious reader. I also have a personal library totaling several thousand volumes. I've read a few ebooks.
I much prefer paper books. No doubt much of this is because of familiarity of the format. But it is mostly because of problems with the technology (poor screens, clunky or small readers), the lack of software (limited titles, lack of standards), the legal environment (DMCA), and the way publishers treat readers (everyone is a pirate).
But I see myself as a reader not a collector. I would gladly trade all my paper books for ebooks if I could find a reader I liked, if there were standard formats so that all books published could be read on that reader, and if I could back up my books.
It would also be nice to be able to access my entire library remotely.
I suspect that there will be some people who will always prefer paper, just as there are those that prefer LPs to CDs. And there will always be collectors, those who view the book as an object worth owning in and of itself.
But I'm mainly interested in the content. And ebooks have the potential to make the content much more accessible. I hope that happens sooner than later.
...even if an e-book would allow infinite viewing of itself, having a hard copy is still better.
For some things perhaps. Not all. An ebook library would take up much less space. Which is a problem I currently face in my one bedroom condo.
It allows someone to move through the book faster (mainly reference books, like Java in a Nutshell),...
I suspect that someone using the find or search command would more quickly locate info then someone using the index or table of contents on a paper book, with the discrepency increasing with the size of the book. Exceptions might be searching for illustrations.
That said I much prefer paper books to todays ebooks. The are numerous problems with the technology (poor screens, clunkly units), the software (limited catalog, lack of standards), the legal environment (DMCA), and the lack of respect the companies have for the consumers (copy protection, greed, thinking everyone is a pirate).
But the problems all seem correctable. And I look forward to the day when book readers are as cheap as gameboys, my entire library is available to me where ever I go, and I can back up my books (ever drop one in a pool, leave one on a plane?).
Chapter 119 talks about intercepting electronic communications. But in this case I did not intercept it, it was sent to me. Thus it would appear that I am a party to this communication, albeit an unintended one.
Chapter 2702 refers to service providers. I am not a service provider. So this would not seem to apply to me.
Chapter 605 reads in part:
Except as authorized by chapter 119, Title 18, no person receiving, assisting in receiving, transmitting, or assisting in transmitting, any interstate or foreign communication by wire or
radio shall divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning thereof, except through authorized channels of transmission or reception,... (bold added)
The information was sent to me through an authorized channel, email. So this doesn't seem to apply to me either.
It seems these laws refer to either those involved in the transmission of electronic communications or those attempting to intercept such communications. It is not clear that they apply in the case whiere I am the addressee of an email.
Perhaps some one who IAL could provide more insite.
Either way you slice it, there aren't any really difficult questions.
Perhaps not, but they miss the point.
The point of the original question was, if I recieve confidential info from someone I do not know because it was sent to me (in this case specifically due to a virus), are there any legal ramifications to me using or publishing that info?
I do not care what happens to the 'sender'. I don't care who was 'negligent'. I have not signed a contract dealing with this info. I do want to know what can happen to me.
Well, there's only two ways the info can be sent to someone who didn't sign the contract:...
This is not true. Alice has signed the contract. Bob has not, nor is he the owner. Cindy has not, nor is she the owner. Alice sends it to Bob. Bob sends it to Cindy. Cindy, has received it from someone who is niether the owner nor signed the contract.
There are of course other ways that someone who is neither a contract signee nor an owner of the document can receive it from some one who is not a signee nor owner. I'll leave determining them as an exercise for the reader. (Some hints: Dave is a burglar, Ed is a publisher, Fay is a dumpster diver,...).
Even if EVERYONE knows about it because ofa virus or a leak, anyone using it is doing so illegally and may be prosecuted for stealing trade secrets. If they delete it, no problem, if they keep it, big illegal problems.
That's fine for people who sign your contract. But what if the info is sent to someone who didn't sign your contract?
This appears to be the question being asked in this Ask/., getting info from "a lot of documents from total strangers I've never heard of before."
The point is that MS bought into these cable companies to ensure a market for their products.
Thus by Rogers going to a Linux based system it sends the message that MS's products don't cut it.
MS made a big push into TV by buying into a number of cable companies, buying WebTV, and starting up MSNBC. With Rogers ditching WebTV for a non-MS product it hints that MS's investments in TV may not be panning out. This is news because it shows that MS dominance in desktop OS's and software doesn't directly translate into dominance in other areas.
This contiues a trend seen with MSN (vs. AOL) and WinCE (vs. Palm) and thus may bode well for Linux, at least in the server market, and poorly for the Xbox.
Thus the bigger point is that its desktop monopoly and its bulging bank accounts don't guarantee MS dominace in every market it enters.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess my point was just to subtle for you.
Sue whomever you like.
But in case you simply missed the point...
One of the main arguments in the post that started this thread is that users choose operating systems and by implication MS became a defacto standard because users chose it.
This assumption, that users can choose the software they use, seems to be widely accepted. And we see in posts on both side of the argument where that is the case. I believe that this assumption is incorrect.
My point is that the majority of the software purchased is chosen for the users and not by the users. It is choosen by the corporations that buy the software.
I don't have (to much of) a problem with my employer dictating the hardware and software I use. I'd prefer to be able to make my own choices but so be it.
What I do have a problem with is that the overall number of choices is shrinking (bye bye BeOS) and thus in those situations where I do have the ability to make choices my options are becoming more and more limited.
And I find it truely evil that MS is abusing their monopoly position to further limit my choices.
Good luck with your lawsuit!
Steve M
Surely for this crowd there will be no problem in making the choice of what OS, browser, etc. to use or not to use.
I'm part of this crowd.
I cannot choose my OS at work. I cannot choose my browser at work. If fact, I can only use the corporate standard OS and apps. I not allowed (supposed) to install anything.
And this is the point. The users don't choose OS's, corporations do. And as MS's monopoly becomes more entrenched there will be fewer and fewer choices for OSes, applications, etc.
That sucks.
Steve M
it was afterall the users that made Microsoft a Defacto.
Bzzt wrong.
Very few users in corporations get to choose the hardware and software they use. Since the majority of PCs are sold to corporations it was this that made MS defacto. And the users are FORCED to use what the corporation says.
But even if MS as defacto standard was a good thing (I don't think it is, but I'll assume it is for the moment) the fact that MS then used their defacto standard in one area to drive out competitors in another is by no means a good thing for users.
And that is the problem. MS has used their success to unfairly compete. And they continue to work limit choices to MS and MS only products via unfair business practises.
And I sure do not want to live in an MS only world.
Steve M
I think copy protection sucks.
I also think that the rats nest of wires connecting my A/V equipment sucks.
My current system has a digital cable signal coming in with analog out going to a ReplayTV which digitizes the signal to store on the hard drive and reconverts it to analog to send to the TV which has an internal line doubler which redigitizes it. (Along with a DVD player, a VCR, a CD changer, a cassette deck, a turntable, a receiver, a second receiver, eleven speakers, a CD player, a computer, a phone connection, and a power conditioner. And lots of cables.)
So I too look forward to a firewire type single cable system that keeps everything in the digital domain.
A firewire system of this type was demoed at the Consumer Electronics Show a couple of years ago. Only the greed and disrespect for their customers of the content companies has prevented it from showing up in your favorite electronics store.
But an all digital system need not have any copy protection.
If only there was an electronics company that had the balls to tell the content companies to stuff it.
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon.
And that sucks.
Steve M
Is it really that bad?
Well, that depends on your point of view.
I look at it this way:
1. It is assumed that I will infringe on the copyright holders intellectual property rights. Thus, I am being treated as a criminal. A rather disrepctful way to treat your customers.
2. My fair use rights are ignored and eliminated.
3. I am expected to pay and pay and pay. I find this outright greed offensive.
4. The ability to timeshift, which in the US was held by the supreme court to be legal, is being taken away. This sucks.
5. Further disrespect for your customers by crippling technology. This can be seen in the DVD region encoding system and in CD watermarking today. And in the future by not providing the best format (i.e. 480i vs 720p) or not allowing comercial skipping (available today via ReplayTV's 30 second skip button or via fast forward on Tivo and VCRs). I find this offensive as well.
My overall sense of the situation is that the 'content' companies care not for their customers but only for their bottom lines. Ignoring the fact that if you take care of the customer the bottom line will take care of itself.
And thus, because the content companies want to squeeze every last penny out of their users (think addicts) HDTV, high definition audio (SACD and DVD Audio), digital music (MP3 et al), TV via the web (think of a sporting event in hidef with hyperlinks to stats, player profiles, etc. Broad band's killer app?) have all been delayed.
So is it really that bad? I think so. The technology is there. Yet as with the VCR, (which became a cash cow for the movie industry), instead of embracing new technology and the new revenue streams it would create, they are fighting it every step of the way.
And I think that sucks big time.
Steve M
Record companies provide music via the popular CD format. These digitally encoded music files can easily be 'ripped' to a computer hard drive, facilitating the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials across computer networks.
Of course, CDs were widespread long before internet access, and most judges probably own a CD player, and are thus familiar with the format. But most judges (and politicians) have shown themselves to be clueless about the internet. And most have probably never played an MP3.
So we have law suits like this.
Steve M
I was down in Cape May, NJ. I saw a number of very bright flashes in the sky.
Damm lightning.
Steve M
What happened to the anti-light pollution movement?
They are here..
Steve M
Keep in mind that these kind of things only make noise on TV and in the movies.
Depends on what you mean by "these kinds of things". The large fireball that was seen over Pennsylvania a few weeks ago "[i]n its final moments the fireball created a deafening sonic boom that shook the ground."
From a report from Sky and Telescope you can read here.
Steve M
Read ccn.com/space this morning and they had nothing on it.
Perhaps you missed this CNN article from August 10th which is currently, Sunday the 12, prominently featured on the CNN Space page?
Steve M
You're just one more person with an agenda claiming unrelated benefits for compliance ... After reading this story, almost everyone will forget about it, because it's really not very important.
Perhaps you should stay more in tune with current events. Like the power crisis in California. Using less energy is not an unrelated but a pretty direct benefit.
The folks up in Clagary thought so, as you can read here. They expect significant savings in energy by changing to full cutoff light fixtures.
A similar law recently passed in Connecticut and another is awaiting the governer's signature in New York.
Light pollution also takes its toll on the environment in more subtle ways then wasted energy.
From a story at ABCNews.com:
"Darkness for Health
Scientists have now discovered that only when it's really dark can your body produce the hormone called melatonin. Melatonin fights diseases, including breast and prostate cancer. "It turns off the cancer cells from growing," says Joan Roberts, a photo biologist. But if there's even a little light around your bed at night, your melatonin production switches off. "So there may be this natural way that Mother Nature has given us, that is, dark night to keep certain cancers under control," Roberts says. Even watching TV turns on other immune system hormones that should be active only in daytime. They get depleted, and you're more likely to get a cold. Nature needs darkness, too. The immune systems of animals grow weak if there's artificial light at night."
Not getting cancer seems like a pretty significant benefit.
Light pollution also has adverse effects on migrating birds and plant life (the plants can't track the natural light curve and don't properly prepare for winter).
Interested readers my wish to check out the International Dark-Sky Association for more info on light pollution and its effects.
Steve M
If you read a couple of posts up, I wrote, "..and I can back up my books (ever drop one in a pool, leave one on a plane?).", as one of the things that needs to be done to 'fix' what passes today for ebooks.
Steve M
I went to the Baen books site and checked out the link to the Baen Free Library.
Jim Baen and Eric Flint get it when it comes to ebooks and intellectual property.
Check out the site, it's worth the read.
Steve M
Only if they're a good speller.
Well that leaves me out...
Of course there could be a spell check on the find command. Or wildcards. Or find similar. When I use my Franklin Spelling Ace and mispell a word I gives me a selection of correctly spelled words to choose from. I often use this feature to find out how to spell a word.
With paper, I can scan the previous and next hundred or so entries at a glance.
You're assuming an ebook won't do this. Or that there won't be a browse mode. I see no reason for there not to be, except maybe poor design. Even my aforementioned Franklin allows me to see previous and next dictionary entries. With a full screen ebook I would expect entire dictionary pages to be displayed. I'd also expect to be able to put in the first few letters of a word and go to the page of words beginning with those letters.
For me, ebooks will only work if they improve on the things paper books are good for. I expect that there will be some trade offs but overall ebooks will be better than paper books, in the same way word processing is an improvement over typing.
Steve M
Let's see if I've got this right ...
You don't like the current legal environment for intellectual propery, including ebooks. Me neither.
Of course there have been laws about paper books as well. Copyright was originally granted by the king to let you publish. The church had the list of forbidden books. In the US there are people that want Tom Sawyer and Harry Potter banded from school libraries.
Of course this has nothing to do with paper books or ebooks in and of themselves. But I could see story tellers arguing that they didn't need permission to tell their tales, so the hell with these new fanged paper things.
You don't like the current hardware. Me neither. Of course the first 'books' were done in stone (think rosetta stone, an early ASCII to EBCDIC type reference manual). Ok so mabye that is stretching it. But in the same fashion I don't think that computer screens or palm pilots deserve to be called ebooks. As far as I'm concerned the 'e' equivelant of a book hasn't been developed yet.
You don't like the current software. Me neither. But have you looked at old hand printed books? Yes some are gorgeous, clear text wonderful illustrations. But some are unreadable scribble.
You don't like poor service. Who does? But the experience of buying an ebook has little to do with the ebook itself. If I visited a book store with surly clerks, badly stocked shelves, damaged books I wouldn't shop there. But this has nothing to do with the books.
You don't like the current sales infrastructure. No browsing the stacks. No recommendations from clerks or fellow shoppers. I agree with you here. Amazon type user reviews just aren't the same. Is the trade off to be able to find any book ever published, download it, and start reading in minutes versus hours spent driving to the local bookstore and hoping they have it (I know, but I never call first) or days waiting for it to be delivered. I don't know, since we aren't there yet. I do like going to the bookstore. I also like the convenience of shopping on line.
So if you are arguing that the current state of the ebook leaves much to be desired I wholeheartedly agree. But we part company if you are saying that ebooks will never be as useful as paper books. Don't confuse the potential with the current implementation.
Of course, ebooks may not pan out. I think they will, but I've been wrong before.
Steve M
How much would it cost to replace an ebook reader if you did the same to it?
That would of course depend on the cost of the reader.
The point is a valid one. I wouldn't want to loose a ten dollar book much less an expensive reader.
In other posts I made in this thread I've said that a reader should be in the gameboy price range. About fifty bucks or so. Still a significant amount to loose, but it won't break the bank.
Steve M
10. Cheap. They should cost about the same as a gameboy. I don't want to worry about losing/breaking a several hundred dollar reader. I could deal with losing ~fifty bucks. I may also want several, one for text books and reference works, one for my scifi collection, one for each hobby, etc.
11. I should be able to back up ebooks. When I loose one of those cheap readers I don't want to be out a thousand books.
12. I should have remote access to my complete library. This is a result of numbers 3 and 11. If I need a book not currently installed in the reader that is on my back up server I should be able to get it.
13. A mechanism to share books. Today I can lend a book to a friend. I would want ebooks to have a lend function that gives the lendee access to a book for a predetemined length of time and that is copy protected.
Steve M
I an a voracious reader. I also have a personal library totaling several thousand volumes. I've read a few ebooks.
I much prefer paper books. No doubt much of this is because of familiarity of the format. But it is mostly because of problems with the technology (poor screens, clunky or small readers), the lack of software (limited titles, lack of standards), the legal environment (DMCA), and the way publishers treat readers (everyone is a pirate).
But I see myself as a reader not a collector. I would gladly trade all my paper books for ebooks if I could find a reader I liked, if there were standard formats so that all books published could be read on that reader, and if I could back up my books.
It would also be nice to be able to access my entire library remotely.
I suspect that there will be some people who will always prefer paper, just as there are those that prefer LPs to CDs. And there will always be collectors, those who view the book as an object worth owning in and of itself.
But I'm mainly interested in the content. And ebooks have the potential to make the content much more accessible. I hope that happens sooner than later.
Steve M
For some things perhaps. Not all. An ebook library would take up much less space. Which is a problem I currently face in my one bedroom condo.
It allows someone to move through the book faster (mainly reference books, like Java in a Nutshell), ...
I suspect that someone using the find or search command would more quickly locate info then someone using the index or table of contents on a paper book, with the discrepency increasing with the size of the book. Exceptions might be searching for illustrations.
That said I much prefer paper books to todays ebooks. The are numerous problems with the technology (poor screens, clunkly units), the software (limited catalog, lack of standards), the legal environment (DMCA), and the lack of respect the companies have for the consumers (copy protection, greed, thinking everyone is a pirate).
But the problems all seem correctable. And I look forward to the day when book readers are as cheap as gameboys, my entire library is available to me where ever I go, and I can back up my books (ever drop one in a pool, leave one on a plane?).
Steve M
Hmmm... (standard IANAL disclaimer) ...
Chapter 119 talks about intercepting electronic communications. But in this case I did not intercept it, it was sent to me. Thus it would appear that I am a party to this communication, albeit an unintended one.
Chapter 2702 refers to service providers. I am not a service provider. So this would not seem to apply to me.
Chapter 605 reads in part: Except as authorized by chapter 119, Title 18, no person receiving, assisting in receiving, transmitting, or assisting in transmitting, any interstate or foreign communication by wire or radio shall divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning thereof, except through authorized channels of transmission or reception, ... (bold added)
The information was sent to me through an authorized channel, email. So this doesn't seem to apply to me either.
It seems these laws refer to either those involved in the transmission of electronic communications or those attempting to intercept such communications. It is not clear that they apply in the case whiere I am the addressee of an email.
Perhaps some one who IAL could provide more insite.
Steve M
Either way you slice it, there aren't any really difficult questions.
Perhaps not, but they miss the point.
The point of the original question was, if I recieve confidential info from someone I do not know because it was sent to me (in this case specifically due to a virus), are there any legal ramifications to me using or publishing that info?
I do not care what happens to the 'sender'. I don't care who was 'negligent'. I have not signed a contract dealing with this info. I do want to know what can happen to me.
Well, there's only two ways the info can be sent to someone who didn't sign the contract: ...
This is not true. Alice has signed the contract. Bob has not, nor is he the owner. Cindy has not, nor is she the owner. Alice sends it to Bob. Bob sends it to Cindy. Cindy, has received it from someone who is niether the owner nor signed the contract.
There are of course other ways that someone who is neither a contract signee nor an owner of the document can receive it from some one who is not a signee nor owner. I'll leave determining them as an exercise for the reader. (Some hints: Dave is a burglar, Ed is a publisher, Fay is a dumpster diver, ...).
Steve M
Even if EVERYONE knows about it because ofa virus or a leak, anyone using it is doing so illegally and may be prosecuted for stealing trade secrets. If they delete it, no problem, if they keep it, big illegal problems.
That's fine for people who sign your contract. But what if the info is sent to someone who didn't sign your contract?
This appears to be the question being asked in this Ask /., getting info from "a lot of documents from total strangers I've never heard of before."
Steve M
The point is that MS bought into these cable companies to ensure a market for their products.
Thus by Rogers going to a Linux based system it sends the message that MS's products don't cut it.
MS made a big push into TV by buying into a number of cable companies, buying WebTV, and starting up MSNBC. With Rogers ditching WebTV for a non-MS product it hints that MS's investments in TV may not be panning out. This is news because it shows that MS dominance in desktop OS's and software doesn't directly translate into dominance in other areas.
This contiues a trend seen with MSN (vs. AOL) and WinCE (vs. Palm) and thus may bode well for Linux, at least in the server market, and poorly for the Xbox.
Thus the bigger point is that its desktop monopoly and its bulging bank accounts don't guarantee MS dominace in every market it enters.
Steve M
Perhaps not.
They admit the sterilization procedures are not perfect.
And I know nothing about the sterilization or lack thereof for Russian probes.
Steve M
Microbes don't have to be virulent to make you sick. Or kill you.
They may just eat you.
Steve M