I'd consider it effectively duress for them to refuse to perform medical services if you don't bow down to their wishes. If someone grabs you by the balls and forces you to accept their terms before they give you medical help you desperately need, where's the consent? They have just as effectively taken away your rights by holding your medical care hostage as if they had slapped you in irons and forced you to sign at gunpoint.
This is compulsion, since medical care is, almost by definition, hardly a luxury. It's an essential good you cannot do without.
Also, this damn well better not be binding in emergency situations where consent to be treated is implied.
Actually, the GPL forbids restricting other people's freedom.
It is, and should be, a GPL violation to secretly get a patent license. If TomTom were to cave to MS without getting slapped with a GPL violation, then anyone who uses tomtom's work would be opening themselves up to patent infringement suits.
Please RTFM and actually read the GPL. A good grep would be "they do not excuse you". Search the GPL for that text and you'll zero in on what I think is a very critical "failsafe" in the GPL.
Well, seeing as employers are often richer than employees...
This is just a case of "The one who has the gold makes the rules", and power structures being what they are, bosses will do as they please online unless stopped by someone bigger, and quite frankly, a polite request from an employee not to be snooped is, at least from the POV of the boss:
1) A tacit admission they have something to hide 2) A challenge to their authority to check out their employee as they see fit, and be damned with ethics.
Never mind that search engines can associate you with the wrong things if you have the misfortune of having the wrong name. And never mind that some sleazeball who hates your guts could ruin your life by spamdexing your name along with some raunchy terms (like hentai).
Employers who look through web profiles are just rummaging through garbage heaps and do so at their own risk. Because while an employee may have little control over what else his online persona may be associated with (again, other people with same name), but there is also little control for the employer. However, that doesn't stop them.
So:
Surf defensively, because bosses have hooked a nice source of information, and like it or not, they ain't letting go. One may as well bow to the inevitable, submit to their place on the totem pole of power, and simply suck it up, keep their online presence clean, and cross their fingers that they won't be unlucky enough to be victimized by a search engine blunder that misassociates them.
Because, in the end, it's all about power. Are you going to resist a google search just on principle? Or are you going to be wise and realize that you ultimately have no control over what your boss is going to look for.
And if you're a boss, take your googles with a grain of salt. You're casting a pretty big fat net when you google someone, and no telling what you'll find, or even if what you dig up has any relevance. Remember that people other than your candidate have influence over what you will find.
What about hardware vendors that use FAT? Locking linux out of interacting with said devices would put a pretty big slice of market share in MS's pocket, wouldn't it?
Hardware vendors using FAT is a good thing for MS because it makes sure that only MS approved programs can use them. In short, if enforced, this patent would ban flash drives and the like from linux boxen.
This case of david versus goliath sounds worthy of the EFF's attention...or soemthing.
Tomtom needs help, not because he's right, but because he's an ally.
MS is up to no good here, as usual.
1) If MS wins, FAT implementations will get smacked down quickly due to the effect of a cascading precedent. This includes linux mounting a floppy disk OR a flash drive OR a camera OR... need I go on? 2) If MS forces a favorable settlement, the chill factor will freeze out competitors 3) If MS settles out, we get nothing 4) If MS loses the case, we have victory.
Anyone who can call MS out as bullshit and back it up, get in touch with TomTom AND his lawyers post haste.
And how are the spammers going to pay if they get caught?
stolen credit cards.
Spammers are assholes and will not pay a dime, at least out of their own pocket.
The feds need to make it a federal offense to, without a warrant, spoof or forge an email header. That step by itself will chill a good part of sporgery, since except for law enforcement/under cover work (which a warrant can take care of), there is absolutely NO good reason to forge a header.
Once spoofed domains are taken care of, then only real spam will come out, and putting a stop to that will be much easier.
And domains should crack down more and stop using SOFTFAIL in their SPF records. Someone sends an email that, by SPF rules, couldn't possibly have come from that domain, well, it's already a spoof, what are the chances it's legit anyway? Zero!
DKIM and SPF all the way. Spam Protection Factor, says I.
And the DDOS'ing the SPF records is complete bullshit for an excuse, because by cracking down on spam you can take off the intertubes WAY more stress than you'd get in retaliation from spammers. You suffer less individually than society collectively.
Spammers are cyber terrorists, and we don't negotiate with terrorists.
Yes,the labels need to get off their high horse and embrace their free advertising.
No, piracy is still wrong.
It's stealing in a moral sense, not a legal sense. But humans don't give a shit if they cheat. We already cheat on something as grave as taxes (which is often a federal offense btw), so why should we expect people to be honest with a piddly copyright?
People are already brazen enough to maraud and embezzle and even hijack, so why should we expect them to have qualms about pirating software?
And often times, people get what they deserve. Pirated software often has malware inside it. Since it's not vetted by the vendor, nobody's going to turn you in for boobytrapping your warez. Who wants to admit to piracy? The customer gets his warez for free, and the pirate gets his machinez. Win win, right?
Remember how Rambus just got away with patent trolling because an appeals court blessed them?
It doesn't matter what the law says, if a judge rules against you, you're screwed. And since stare decisis constrains future decisions (aka "settle it now and we don't care if a mistake gets set in stone"), once screwed always screwed.
Anyone who has a stake in the outcome of this case needs to get their say in now or forever hold his peace.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes
And from the BSA no less!
Slashdot's CIO should really get in touch with Google over /.'s adsense account...
I'd consider it effectively duress for them to refuse to perform medical services if you don't bow down to their wishes. If someone grabs you by the balls and forces you to accept their terms before they give you medical help you desperately need, where's the consent? They have just as effectively taken away your rights by holding your medical care hostage as if they had slapped you in irons and forced you to sign at gunpoint.
This is compulsion, since medical care is, almost by definition, hardly a luxury. It's an essential good you cannot do without.
Also, this damn well better not be binding in emergency situations where consent to be treated is implied.
Actually, the GPL forbids restricting other people's freedom.
It is, and should be, a GPL violation to secretly get a patent license. If TomTom were to cave to MS without getting slapped with a GPL violation, then anyone who uses tomtom's work would be opening themselves up to patent infringement suits.
Please RTFM and actually read the GPL. A good grep would be "they do not excuse you". Search the GPL for that text and you'll zero in on what I think is a very critical "failsafe" in the GPL.
registry hacking
Banned by the feds at the behest of the competition shy cotton industry
Whoever tagged this with "goodluckwiththat" is wise.
Bosses will do as they damn please no matter what laws we pass, so why bother trying?
Free as in speech, not free as in beer.
But...but...
But I signed up for Lifelock dammit!
Well, seeing as employers are often richer than employees...
This is just a case of "The one who has the gold makes the rules", and power structures being what they are, bosses will do as they please online unless stopped by someone bigger, and quite frankly, a polite request from an employee not to be snooped is, at least from the POV of the boss:
1) A tacit admission they have something to hide
2) A challenge to their authority to check out their employee as they see fit, and be damned with ethics.
Never mind that search engines can associate you with the wrong things if you have the misfortune of having the wrong name. And never mind that some sleazeball who hates your guts could ruin your life by spamdexing your name along with some raunchy terms (like hentai).
Employers who look through web profiles are just rummaging through garbage heaps and do so at their own risk. Because while an employee may have little control over what else his online persona may be associated with (again, other people with same name), but there is also little control for the employer. However, that doesn't stop them.
So:
Surf defensively, because bosses have hooked a nice source of information, and like it or not, they ain't letting go. One may as well bow to the inevitable, submit to their place on the totem pole of power, and simply suck it up, keep their online presence clean, and cross their fingers that they won't be unlucky enough to be victimized by a search engine blunder that misassociates them.
Because, in the end, it's all about power. Are you going to resist a google search just on principle? Or are you going to be wise and realize that you ultimately have no control over what your boss is going to look for.
And if you're a boss, take your googles with a grain of salt. You're casting a pretty big fat net when you google someone, and no telling what you'll find, or even if what you dig up has any relevance. Remember that people other than your candidate have influence over what you will find.
And I hope that one guy who had ethical qualms about doing what his client told him is going to be saved from any stigma?
If you're even remotely serious I don't blame you.
I can't imagine it's easy manning the front lines.
What copyleft does is prevent someone else from scooping up YOUR work and proprietizing it.
Whether that work is original for you or was itself copylefted from someone else, it protects you as a deriver yourself.
Ok, this is going into a trollfest if I keep arguing beyond this point, so here goes my last statement in this fork.
This patent affects more than just the devices. It also affects anyone trying to interact with the filesystem on said device.
What about hardware vendors that use FAT? Locking linux out of interacting with said devices would put a pretty big slice of market share in MS's pocket, wouldn't it?
Hardware vendors using FAT is a good thing for MS because it makes sure that only MS approved programs can use them. In short, if enforced, this patent would ban flash drives and the like from linux boxen.
That doesn't help when you are dealing with embedded devices like mp3 players and flash drives that often only work correctly with FAT
MS's patent on FAT would give it an effective monopoly on interacting with these devices if it were upheld. This has major cascade potential.
This case of david versus goliath sounds worthy of the EFF's attention...or soemthing.
Tomtom needs help, not because he's right, but because he's an ally.
MS is up to no good here, as usual.
1) If MS wins, FAT implementations will get smacked down quickly due to the effect of a cascading precedent. This includes linux mounting a floppy disk OR a flash drive OR a camera OR... need I go on?
2) If MS forces a favorable settlement, the chill factor will freeze out competitors
3) If MS settles out, we get nothing
4) If MS loses the case, we have victory.
Anyone who can call MS out as bullshit and back it up, get in touch with TomTom AND his lawyers post haste.
Maybe MS could be nailed for discriminatory patent licensing if we find that, say, TomTom is the only unlicensed infringer being targeted?
I dunno...
p2p congests less than HTTP because a good chunk of the traffic stays local
Howa bout having one super-leacher serving as lieutenant seeder to the network's other peers?
Heck, P2P could even SAVE the ISP money by sparing it from costly transit payments with its upstreams.
P2P may be cloggy, but as far as upstream bw goes, it gets a bigger bang for the byte.
And of course abusive "we do what we want" style EULA's mean you don't have recourse, as it's one of those "sole and final discretion" deals.
And how are the spammers going to pay if they get caught?
stolen credit cards.
Spammers are assholes and will not pay a dime, at least out of their own pocket.
The feds need to make it a federal offense to, without a warrant, spoof or forge an email header. That step by itself will chill a good part of sporgery, since except for law enforcement/under cover work (which a warrant can take care of), there is absolutely NO good reason to forge a header.
Once spoofed domains are taken care of, then only real spam will come out, and putting a stop to that will be much easier.
And domains should crack down more and stop using SOFTFAIL in their SPF records. Someone sends an email that, by SPF rules, couldn't possibly have come from that domain, well, it's already a spoof, what are the chances it's legit anyway? Zero!
DKIM and SPF all the way. Spam Protection Factor, says I.
And the DDOS'ing the SPF records is complete bullshit for an excuse, because by cracking down on spam you can take off the intertubes WAY more stress than you'd get in retaliation from spammers. You suffer less individually than society collectively.
Spammers are cyber terrorists, and we don't negotiate with terrorists.
The lesser of two evils is still evil, much like you being a black pot doesn't give the kettle a right to be black as well.
Yes,the labels need to get off their high horse and embrace their free advertising.
No, piracy is still wrong.
It's stealing in a moral sense, not a legal sense. But humans don't give a shit if they cheat. We already cheat on something as grave as taxes (which is often a federal offense btw), so why should we expect people to be honest with a piddly copyright?
People are already brazen enough to maraud and embezzle and even hijack, so why should we expect them to have qualms about pirating software?
And often times, people get what they deserve. Pirated software often has malware inside it. Since it's not vetted by the vendor, nobody's going to turn you in for boobytrapping your warez. Who wants to admit to piracy? The customer gets his warez for free, and the pirate gets his machinez. Win win, right?
Most copyleft licenses are designed to force you to share, whereas proprietary code often cannot be used at all without at a minimum hefty royalties.
Not if the judge says different.
Remember how Rambus just got away with patent trolling because an appeals court blessed them?
It doesn't matter what the law says, if a judge rules against you, you're screwed. And since stare decisis constrains future decisions (aka "settle it now and we don't care if a mistake gets set in stone"), once screwed always screwed.
Anyone who has a stake in the outcome of this case needs to get their say in now or forever hold his peace.
The case B you mentioned is exactly why I think open source should be used from the beginning.