Ditto - emails normally get written, checked over, and then sent. IMs are not always checked but they are in full prose rather than "leet speak", despite the fact that at 23 I'm in the right age range for unintelligible abbreviations. When I am on IM then I tend to stay as "busy" because I want to be available to people with questions about the mods/tools I make, but I don't want to be pestered by the "I want to talk about random crap even though you don't have a clue who I am" people.
The slightest distraction and whatever I'm doing tends to take ages. Meetings with background noise seem to throw me as I'm constantly trying to listen to everything that's going on at once because it's all a distraction. How or why anyone bothers with Twitter and Facebook and the like I don't know. I've tried keeping a blog of my web development and things, but gave up on it after it took too long.
I'm quite happy to keep it as a convenience (e.g. talking with my brother while he's on a train journey and bored) but it's too easy to become a terrible distraction and an additional burden. That's why I avoid giving people in the company my personal mobile number, and why I make it clear that when I'm not in work then I'm not in work.
I think you missed part of the article (or, being/., all of it!) where it said that introverts aren't necessarily shy. Introverts are people who are tired by social interactions and would rather be doing things alone.
Depending on how they play WoW, they may still be being introverted while playing - grinding on their own or whatever. The fact that they're playing an MMORPG on a PC rather than multiplayer gaming at someone's house on a console is more of an introverted preference.
But that's part of copyright legislation, not some newly named "DMCA" legislation that seems to have been designed to be abused.
I can see from a legal stand-point that taking something down when infringement is claimed is the best policy, as it is up to the court to decide if it infringes or not and the court hasn't made a decision at that point, but the DMCA seems to have somehow taken it a step too far. Even if there wasn't "safe harbour", I'd have thought there would be the ability under previous law to take similar action to force the removal of items where they infringed.
I'd noticed a similar pattern. Amazon used to stock a huge proportion of the books they listed, now you hit a lot of listings and all you get is a "new/used" link to some company of unknown quality. They're all traders registered with Amazon, so the new quality should be the same (and can be a lot cheaper) but why the shirking of responsibility for actually selling stuff?
POD sounds like a good idea, but forcing a single supplier seems like potential commercial suicide (probably not for such a big company, but certainly not helpful).
Hang on, isn't this (the first part at least) how the DMCA supposed to work? I thought hosts/ISPs had to honour the takedown request and then investigate if a counter claim or dispute was filed so that the host can claim safe harbour.
Thank goodness the UK doesn't have anything quite as bad as the DMCA (yet...)
The bit about terminating services is a bit more extreme, but seems to be some standard practice taken too far - "You've breached part of the ToS by posting breaking a law, so we'll terminate your account" but without the part where they check whether it was a copyright infringement or just another quick DMCA claim.
Should end users be ultimately responsible for the state of their systems?
Yes and no, really. The bank should have safeguards to protect against fraud (e.g. my bank has halted a purchase and phoned me because it was a reasonable sized computer purchase that I didn't normally make) but at the same time then if the user has been phished/keylogged because they haven't been paying attention and taking the correct precautions then why should the banks shell out?
It's a bit like expecting you car insurance to cover an accident when you've had dodgy brakes and a windscreen covered in crap - you could have avoided it if you had cleaned up and made sure it was safe, and there's nothing the insurers can do to do it for you.
I realised after posting that it would appear as a post with no obvious parent and I should have been clearer. The "beware" is for the GP comment, not the summary (noticed the "parent" link under my comment;) )
Wow, even if I've not had any April Fools pranks to laugh at (and with it being 13:30 in the UK then I shouldn't get any now), that response got a smirk!
Thank you for proving that people can't leave topics alone, even when they say they will and when their returning argument is "this is all pointless and doesn't merit a response":D
Okay, so maybe it is a day to be a bit more dubious than most, but this is lawyers we're talking about. So what if there's some "constitution" thing that might get in their way, they'll do what they're paid to do - interpret everything in their own way to get at the info they want. Such is the way of lawyers.
I assumed it meant storage, but had never paid much attention to Flash being ROM. It was meant as irony, but more in the "memory? don't you mean storage" way of the usual mis-usage (e.g. my parents and grandparents using them interchangeably)
With that much extra memory on top of how much it already has it'll have way more memory than my desktop machine (8x or more). They're not trying to make the iPhone interesting for Microsoft developers and adding a version of Boot Camp to it, are they? Even with 16GB+ I'm not sure I'd want to try and run Vista on an iPhone.
W.r.t 'owning' the software, I said later in another post that it could very easily (legally, if not logically) be interpreted that you own a copy of the installer and that through running the installer you are giving the option to install a full application if you agree to the EULA.
And in case someone else mentions extracting the files and installing them yourself, you're then bypassing a digital measure (installer and EULA dialog) aimed at controlling your use of the app (by only letting you legally use it if you agree) so that is at the least probably counted as a DMCA violation (thank goodness we don't have that in the UK yet) and potentially reverse engineering or similar.
So yes, 17 USC 117(a)(1) does let you make copies of software you own as long as it is done in the normal operation of using it (e.g. copying to RAM or a swap partition) but it's one hell of a leap from that to "I don't have to agree to your EULA because I paid for and own a physical medium and an installer app".
Or, from what I've eventually managed to deduce from legal speak, maybe you "own" a copy of the media and the installer that installs some licensed product? You can do whatever you want with the installer as laid out in whatever USC that was (America seems to have too many of them) but to use the actual final software then you've got to agree to the license that is the EULA.
If that's an incorrect interpretation then all I can say is: WTF? How does any software company survive in America when its legislation basically seems to say (according to your interpretation) "once I have a copy of it then I can do what I want with it because it is mine, so screw your 90 day limit because I 'own' it and am not licensing it for 90 days".
If the "I defend Apple for dumb decisions, to the point of logical absurdity" t-shirt fits...
What if the "I can see the legal and technical view point and there is (legally if not logically) an EULA for a reason" fits? I never said anything about defending Apple, just that from a legal point of view then it isn't necessarily cut and dry as they do provide you with a way to say "oh, I shouldn't be using this".
Then that would place the totality of the blame squarely on them.
Perhaps, or partly on them for not differentiating and partly on the user for accepting an EULA that they're technically breaking.
The truth is I'm done with this.
That's a shame. You seemed like you might have reasonable arguments when you actually researched the EULA that stood up in court and then you suddenly went and had paddy about me being "a fanboy".
I'm not saying it's entirely the end user's fault, after all there will be an assumption that they can use what is suggested, but from a legal standpoint there's a definite "well you could have read the conditions and you didn't, so ignorance of a condition is not a defence" position.
Fanboy? I don't use iTunes, I don't know if a feature is available, I run Fedora Linux, and I'm a fanboy? Wow, there's a contortion of logic and reasoning.
As I said somewhere else, maybe they offered it because their updater can't tell the difference between Windows on Mac and other Windows, it just knows (and only cares that) it's a Windows updater rather than an OS X updater?
Or, alternatively, 1) someone cocked up, 2) they're planning on changing the EULA, or 3) Windows on Mac and Windows on PC use the same update source and this is the first time that it has potentially caused a 'problem'.
You'd have to ask a lawyer about that one, but I suspect the legal stance is that there is a legal agreement in place for you to be allowed to execute it (it's a EULA, not a EILA - End Installer's License Agreement) and so you were still breaching the EULA. It seems a bit like saying "is it still theft if I take something that is lying on a front garden, because I didn't have to break anything and it was easily accessible", or "is it still murder if I find a way to time the traffic lights on a railway crossing such that he's going to go over them just as a train does".
I've not used iTunes for ages, and never enabled its update feature, so I don't know if it has an "auto-update and auto-accept the updates" feature, but if they said "here's an app, do you want it?" and you okayed the update then you did request it. They sent you the notification of availability, or the 'offer', but they didn't send you the app.
Also, it was bundled with a QuickTime update (that was, admittedly, pushed through an updater that is installed by iTunes), so it wasn't actually an iTunes update.
We have an offer on for iPods where we include them for free. We'll make the offer big and obvious and put it at the top of a board saying "this is our offer". We'll then put the conditions at the bottom of the board (which say you can't use it unless you own a plasma TV from us) and say that we're automatically adding this to your subtotal unless you opt out. If you don't opt out and tell us that you agree to all of your purchases then you agree to all of the conditions on all of the items.
Yes, it's a little dirty, but not nearly as dirty as the example you put forward. TBH, the example above isn't too different to what you do every time you shop anyway - every till in the UK and the vast majority of receipts say that by making the purchase you agree to their terms and conditions. I don't know of anyone who reads them, because if you don't agree then you don't get, but if they were upheld (like EULAs apparently have been in America) then they'd potentially be able to screw a lot of people.
Besides, I thought that everyone on/. knew that bits could be copied for no financial loss and so comparing bit copying to theft was a misnomer;)
You must be reading a different version to what I can find. Cornell's US Code: Title 17, 117 doesn't mention anything even remotely close to that, just that if you own a copy then you have the right to copy it for backup, etc.
There's two types of want, though. There's want from desire for something and want from a need to achieve a goal.
I do web dev and so I want to make sure my site looks good (or as good as is possible) for as many people as possible. Because of that I want to use Safari to see what the common Mac rendering looks like. It's not a desire to use the app for the app's sake, but a want to use it because it helps me see what it looks like.
Potentially, but it'll be hellish invasive and a number of intrusion tools might pick it up. Most software just checks Windows version. Linux makes access to architecture and a couple of other bits easy. They could find that it's a dual-core Pentium, and that someone has set the vendor to "Apple", but does that mean it's an Apple?
The only other way is that the updater maintains a list of what hardware configs Apple has, and then they'll need to keep updating that list and potentially get in to the situation where someone gets told they can't have something because their rig isn't identified as an Apple machine, but is a normal Windows install on any other machine.
Was there a way to read the license agreement before installing the update? If there was then surely Apple are in the 'clear', as you can run Windows on an Apple and so it's not their fault that you installed something that you shouldn't technically have done.
How are they to know the difference between Windows on a Mac and Windows on any other PC to determine whether to disable the 'bonus feature' or not?
Slashdot Mirror
Ditto - emails normally get written, checked over, and then sent. IMs are not always checked but they are in full prose rather than "leet speak", despite the fact that at 23 I'm in the right age range for unintelligible abbreviations. When I am on IM then I tend to stay as "busy" because I want to be available to people with questions about the mods/tools I make, but I don't want to be pestered by the "I want to talk about random crap even though you don't have a clue who I am" people.
The slightest distraction and whatever I'm doing tends to take ages. Meetings with background noise seem to throw me as I'm constantly trying to listen to everything that's going on at once because it's all a distraction. How or why anyone bothers with Twitter and Facebook and the like I don't know. I've tried keeping a blog of my web development and things, but gave up on it after it took too long.
I'm quite happy to keep it as a convenience (e.g. talking with my brother while he's on a train journey and bored) but it's too easy to become a terrible distraction and an additional burden. That's why I avoid giving people in the company my personal mobile number, and why I make it clear that when I'm not in work then I'm not in work.
I think you missed part of the article (or, being /., all of it!) where it said that introverts aren't necessarily shy. Introverts are people who are tired by social interactions and would rather be doing things alone.
Depending on how they play WoW, they may still be being introverted while playing - grinding on their own or whatever. The fact that they're playing an MMORPG on a PC rather than multiplayer gaming at someone's house on a console is more of an introverted preference.
But that's part of copyright legislation, not some newly named "DMCA" legislation that seems to have been designed to be abused.
I can see from a legal stand-point that taking something down when infringement is claimed is the best policy, as it is up to the court to decide if it infringes or not and the court hasn't made a decision at that point, but the DMCA seems to have somehow taken it a step too far. Even if there wasn't "safe harbour", I'd have thought there would be the ability under previous law to take similar action to force the removal of items where they infringed.
I'd noticed a similar pattern. Amazon used to stock a huge proportion of the books they listed, now you hit a lot of listings and all you get is a "new/used" link to some company of unknown quality. They're all traders registered with Amazon, so the new quality should be the same (and can be a lot cheaper) but why the shirking of responsibility for actually selling stuff?
POD sounds like a good idea, but forcing a single supplier seems like potential commercial suicide (probably not for such a big company, but certainly not helpful).
Hang on, isn't this (the first part at least) how the DMCA supposed to work? I thought hosts/ISPs had to honour the takedown request and then investigate if a counter claim or dispute was filed so that the host can claim safe harbour.
Thank goodness the UK doesn't have anything quite as bad as the DMCA (yet...)
The bit about terminating services is a bit more extreme, but seems to be some standard practice taken too far - "You've breached part of the ToS by posting breaking a law, so we'll terminate your account" but without the part where they check whether it was a copyright infringement or just another quick DMCA claim.
Yes and no, really. The bank should have safeguards to protect against fraud (e.g. my bank has halted a purchase and phoned me because it was a reasonable sized computer purchase that I didn't normally make) but at the same time then if the user has been phished/keylogged because they haven't been paying attention and taking the correct precautions then why should the banks shell out?
It's a bit like expecting you car insurance to cover an accident when you've had dodgy brakes and a windscreen covered in crap - you could have avoided it if you had cleaned up and made sure it was safe, and there's nothing the insurers can do to do it for you.
Anyone feel like trying to write Apache to run over BitTorrent for serving web pages?
I realised after posting that it would appear as a post with no obvious parent and I should have been clearer. The "beware" is for the GP comment, not the summary (noticed the "parent" link under my comment ;) )
I've not clicked the link, but it's another Yahoo redirect link to an on.nimp.org address. Proceed with caution/insanity.
Wow, even if I've not had any April Fools pranks to laugh at (and with it being 13:30 in the UK then I shouldn't get any now), that response got a smirk!
:D
Thank you for proving that people can't leave topics alone, even when they say they will and when their returning argument is "this is all pointless and doesn't merit a response"
Okay, so maybe it is a day to be a bit more dubious than most, but this is lawyers we're talking about. So what if there's some "constitution" thing that might get in their way, they'll do what they're paid to do - interpret everything in their own way to get at the info they want. Such is the way of lawyers.
I assumed it meant storage, but had never paid much attention to Flash being ROM. It was meant as irony, but more in the "memory? don't you mean storage" way of the usual mis-usage (e.g. my parents and grandparents using them interchangeably)
With that much extra memory on top of how much it already has it'll have way more memory than my desktop machine (8x or more). They're not trying to make the iPhone interesting for Microsoft developers and adding a version of Boot Camp to it, are they? Even with 16GB+ I'm not sure I'd want to try and run Vista on an iPhone.
W.r.t 'owning' the software, I said later in another post that it could very easily (legally, if not logically) be interpreted that you own a copy of the installer and that through running the installer you are giving the option to install a full application if you agree to the EULA.
And in case someone else mentions extracting the files and installing them yourself, you're then bypassing a digital measure (installer and EULA dialog) aimed at controlling your use of the app (by only letting you legally use it if you agree) so that is at the least probably counted as a DMCA violation (thank goodness we don't have that in the UK yet) and potentially reverse engineering or similar.
So yes, 17 USC 117(a)(1) does let you make copies of software you own as long as it is done in the normal operation of using it (e.g. copying to RAM or a swap partition) but it's one hell of a leap from that to "I don't have to agree to your EULA because I paid for and own a physical medium and an installer app".
Wasn't South Park always terrible and substandard anyway?
Or, from what I've eventually managed to deduce from legal speak, maybe you "own" a copy of the media and the installer that installs some licensed product? You can do whatever you want with the installer as laid out in whatever USC that was (America seems to have too many of them) but to use the actual final software then you've got to agree to the license that is the EULA.
If that's an incorrect interpretation then all I can say is: WTF? How does any software company survive in America when its legislation basically seems to say (according to your interpretation) "once I have a copy of it then I can do what I want with it because it is mine, so screw your 90 day limit because I 'own' it and am not licensing it for 90 days".
What if the "I can see the legal and technical view point and there is (legally if not logically) an EULA for a reason" fits? I never said anything about defending Apple, just that from a legal point of view then it isn't necessarily cut and dry as they do provide you with a way to say "oh, I shouldn't be using this".
Perhaps, or partly on them for not differentiating and partly on the user for accepting an EULA that they're technically breaking.
That's a shame. You seemed like you might have reasonable arguments when you actually researched the EULA that stood up in court and then you suddenly went and had paddy about me being "a fanboy".
I'm not saying it's entirely the end user's fault, after all there will be an assumption that they can use what is suggested, but from a legal standpoint there's a definite "well you could have read the conditions and you didn't, so ignorance of a condition is not a defence" position.
Fanboy? I don't use iTunes, I don't know if a feature is available, I run Fedora Linux, and I'm a fanboy? Wow, there's a contortion of logic and reasoning.
As I said somewhere else, maybe they offered it because their updater can't tell the difference between Windows on Mac and other Windows, it just knows (and only cares that) it's a Windows updater rather than an OS X updater?
Or, alternatively, 1) someone cocked up, 2) they're planning on changing the EULA, or 3) Windows on Mac and Windows on PC use the same update source and this is the first time that it has potentially caused a 'problem'.
You'd have to ask a lawyer about that one, but I suspect the legal stance is that there is a legal agreement in place for you to be allowed to execute it (it's a EULA, not a EILA - End Installer's License Agreement) and so you were still breaching the EULA. It seems a bit like saying "is it still theft if I take something that is lying on a front garden, because I didn't have to break anything and it was easily accessible", or "is it still murder if I find a way to time the traffic lights on a railway crossing such that he's going to go over them just as a train does".
I've not used iTunes for ages, and never enabled its update feature, so I don't know if it has an "auto-update and auto-accept the updates" feature, but if they said "here's an app, do you want it?" and you okayed the update then you did request it. They sent you the notification of availability, or the 'offer', but they didn't send you the app.
Also, it was bundled with a QuickTime update (that was, admittedly, pushed through an updater that is installed by iTunes), so it wasn't actually an iTunes update.
Yes, it's a little dirty, but not nearly as dirty as the example you put forward. TBH, the example above isn't too different to what you do every time you shop anyway - every till in the UK and the vast majority of receipts say that by making the purchase you agree to their terms and conditions. I don't know of anyone who reads them, because if you don't agree then you don't get, but if they were upheld (like EULAs apparently have been in America) then they'd potentially be able to screw a lot of people.
Besides, I thought that everyone on
You must be reading a different version to what I can find. Cornell's US Code: Title 17, 117 doesn't mention anything even remotely close to that, just that if you own a copy then you have the right to copy it for backup, etc.
There's two types of want, though. There's want from desire for something and want from a need to achieve a goal.
I do web dev and so I want to make sure my site looks good (or as good as is possible) for as many people as possible. Because of that I want to use Safari to see what the common Mac rendering looks like. It's not a desire to use the app for the app's sake, but a want to use it because it helps me see what it looks like.
Potentially, but it'll be hellish invasive and a number of intrusion tools might pick it up. Most software just checks Windows version. Linux makes access to architecture and a couple of other bits easy. They could find that it's a dual-core Pentium, and that someone has set the vendor to "Apple", but does that mean it's an Apple?
The only other way is that the updater maintains a list of what hardware configs Apple has, and then they'll need to keep updating that list and potentially get in to the situation where someone gets told they can't have something because their rig isn't identified as an Apple machine, but is a normal Windows install on any other machine.
Was there a way to read the license agreement before installing the update? If there was then surely Apple are in the 'clear', as you can run Windows on an Apple and so it's not their fault that you installed something that you shouldn't technically have done.
How are they to know the difference between Windows on a Mac and Windows on any other PC to determine whether to disable the 'bonus feature' or not?