If a company uses part of GPL code in their product, what is to stop them from obfuscating all the non-GPL code, and releasing that? That way they are technically allowing downloads of "GPL code", while still keeping it closed source.
But that isn't closed source: it is shrouded source, which is more useful. Obfuscation typically involves removing whitespace and renaming variables. However, the architecture of the code is preserved. If I had a choice between reverse-engineering machine code vs. shrouded-source code, shrouded would be the hand down winner. (And you could legally reverse enginer it -- the GPL guarantees that by the "You may not impose any further restrictions..." clause.)
But this is beside the point. Companies shouldn't think of it as choosing between machine vs shrounded sources. They should think of it as customers choosing between documented, extendable systems vs undocumented, dead-end systems.
Hear hear! Engineering is much, much more than just writing code, analyzing circuits, specifying bolts, and similar details. There are things like
System architecture
Budgeting personnel and other resources
Making viable products (that people will actually buy)
Working with customers
Organizing documentation
Bringing multiple disciplines to bear on a problem
These are the hard things, the things that kill schedules and budgets. And they take experience. That kid right out of college may be able to code the quicksort algorithm in 30 characters of Perl, but what if it isn't fast enough? Would they be able to rearchitect the system to use machine code? Would they even know that custom sorting hardware is possible? If they did, would they be able to rationally determine if it's workable?
I'm a fairly young guy (25), but I really value my older colleagues. No matter what comes up, they've seen something like it before. Often, they're already analyzing different solutions while I'm still trying to wrap my brain around a problem.
The Supreme Court rejected such notices in 1908. The case is BOBBS-MERRILL CO. v. STRAUS, 210 U.S. 339(1908).
(For people who didn't follow the link and read the decision...)
"Fair use" is a part of copyright law that lets you make copies of works you posses for your own use. For instance, if I have a license to Windows 98, I can lawfully copy it onto my hard drive for use.
Fair use has one restriction: keeping the copies after giving the original to another person is infringement. Specifically, it is the copies themself that infringe, not the original work, nor the transfer of the original.
The other issue is "first sale". Copyright is a grant of monopoly, allowing the author to control how the work is published. And that's as far as the monopoly extends. Once a copy has been published, the author's only right is preventing further publication without their permission.
That a sale might cause previously noninfringing "fair use" copies to become infringing is not a cause for restraining the sale, and the sale is not subject to remedies. It simply is not part of copyright law. Sale of a lawful original copy is always lawful. It is keeping the now-infringing copies that is unlawful, and the law provides remedies for that.
In the Microsoft/eBay case, Microsoft has no cause for preventing the sale, due to the first sale doctrine. At most, when they know that copies were kept after the sale, there are other remedies that may be pursued. They are not acting out of any right or privilege of law, but out of greed.
Microsoft is committing slander and libel, by making allegations of infringement with reckless disregard for truth. Their claims also create false advertising, because they original copyright works were not advertised as being "not for resale". Finally, preventing sales constitutes restraint of trade, which is generally illegal.
And worst of all, they're doing it in collusion with another company. You'd think they would be more...uh...subtle, what with the Department of Justice breathing down their necks.
BASIC is designed to be easy, Pascal is designed to teach. In other words, BASIC is for people that don't want to learn structured programming - they want to get it done w/ the least amount of learning. In my book, that's a bad way to learn to program.
I disagree. Classic interpreted BASIC is interactive. You get instant feedback when you do something wrong. In fact, you can type in a command and watch what it does at any time. There is no compiling, no linking, no libraries, no GUIs, and no lists of cryptic error messages. You don't have to master a complicated editor, and there a no makefiles.
This makes Basic very approachable and unthreatening. A "segementation violation" or "unhandled exception" could be a little intimidating to a 12 year old.
Once they understand variables, operators and their precendences, file I/O, etc. they can graduate to a better language. There's no point in teaching engineering design concepts when they still don't grasp the concept of arrays and output formatting.
As far as I know the idea of copyleft doesn't translate well into the world of patents.
Sure it does. In fact, it's done all the time. Consider the various hardware standards, like PCMCIA, USB, and Rambus. There is typically a company who holds various patents on the technology (i.e., you can't make a particular type of gadget without their permission). And they'll license all those patents to anybody who asks, on two conditions:
You agree to license all of your patents on the technology to all users of the technology, and
You agree to pay a small fee. Sometimes the fee is a flat rate, and sometimes it is per-manufactured-unit. Either way, it's affordable compared to the cost of manufacture. Many times, the fee is only there to keep the licensing company afloat, so it's usually affordable.
It's not as simple as copyright, because the stakes are higher and patent law is more onerous, and it does require a corporation for the purposes of entering into licensing contracts, but it is doable.
"IBM is generally willing to grant nonexclusive licenses under its patents.... Included in the agreement is an option for IBM to obtain a nonexclusive royalty bearing license under patents of the licensee on terms similar to those described above."
In other words, they'll license many of their patents on reasonable terms, if you'll reciprocate. This similar to the copyleft concept.
At the beginning of the century, no antibiotics. Polio disfigured millions of children...
And the cure? Information: Instructions for virus identification, in vivo culture, inactivation to render the virus harmless, and innoculation. All enabled by the flow of information between scientists, unfettered by govt. meddling. Future health improvements will be strongly driven by the Internet, as researchers exchange DNA sequences, protein structures, email, scientific publications over the Internet.
And your picture of health advances is entirely too rosy. In this day of condom and yeast infection advertisements on prime-time TV, we forget the US govt's old campaign to suppress certain health-related information. The US postal inspectors used to arrest people for mailing information about contraception and prophylaxis. Today's Internet would laugh off such an attack, and people would not be kept in ignorance by a malicious government.
The world is (relatively) at peace...
The people's ignorance is the tyrant's best friend. The USSR was felled in part by the rise of personal computing -- a computer in subversive hands is more powerful than a printing press -- plausible deniability is no farther away than the nearest magnet. And the Chinese govt can never emulate Pol Pot, no matter how much they want to -- Tianemen (sp?) Square is not an obscure jungle 5000 miles away, it's a video essentially every Westerner has seen. In the world of today, New York and Moscow are 500 milliseconds apart.
And people whine that their "right" to steal music via Napster may be taken away.
The right to public is the right to publish, regardless of how it is exercised. And the RIAA and MPAA would take away that right if they could -- total control is their ideal. They fought tooth and nail every step of the way, against VCRs, against DAT (digital audio tape), and against CD writers. In many cases, they got riduculous legislation passed, such as the "taxes" that are paid on blank CDRs. And now they want to ban file sharing on the Internet. The danger is not that the Internet will be made illegal, but that a "compromise" will be reached handing over significant control to the media industries.
The people of today are the most spoiled in history. Instead of looking at the incredible upward curve of freedom and quality of life, they can only focus on "hardship" the current generation endures. Cry me a river.
The present liberty and prosperity of Americans, Europeans, and a few lucky others is not a thing of permanence, to be hung over the fireplace as a trophy. It is constantly being paid for. Sometimes the price is dear, as at Omaha beach and Hiroshima. Sometimes it's the price is labor, as in construction and farming. And sometimes the price is politicking, such as the effort the keep the Internet free.
FWIW, while these ships were in operation, the British government engaged in a campaign of constant harassment and intimidation, arresting anyone who supplied them, watching in case the winds caused them to stray an inch into territorial waters, training (big) guns on them and feigning ramming actions. You may want to take that kind of thing into account when you set up your offshore ISP.
You would need some sort of obnoxious defensive capability. Not a conventional military weapon, but a trap connected to dead-man switches. If they attack, they get your revenge, possibly from beyond the grave. Like 100,000 barrels of crude oil. Laced with PCBs, or better yet, with radioactive cobalt-60. Or in the case of Britain, with the brains of hundreds of BSE-positive cattle. The possibilities are endless...
But violence is said to be the last refuge of the incompetent. Blackmail of a president/prime minister/generalissimo/senator could be just as effective. Perhaps the web hosting fee could be partially paid in verifiable blackmail material? And of course, a shady ISP would provide the perfect environment for collecting such material.
If one were conspiracy minded, one could speculate whether Echelon will be getting into the clandestine web hosting business. Think about it: cloak and dagger, lots of dedicated backbones, morally flexible, datacenters all over the world, etc. (Better stop -- I'm scaring myself.)
The GPL would not be necessary without copyright law!... and if pay-per-copy were eliminated, there'd be no motive for authors not to share their source code...
I disagree. The GPL, which can permanently liberate software, is based on copyright. Without copyright, authors would have an even stronger motive not to share sources. Commercial programmers would be reduced to a continual arms race to develop newer copy "protection" methods, because the temporary advantage of obfuscation would be the only way to eke out any money from sales. Shrink-wrap licenses would change to strong, fully-enforceable nondisclosure agreements that must be signed before purchase. All software would be less open than the BSD license.
On the other hand, with copyright, authors can earn a living creating works. And the GPL is possible, which can liberate source code permanently. I personally think copyright is a good balance between liberty and tyranny. (Of course, I make a living creating intellectual "property", so I'm not unbiased.)
Thats what meta moderation should take care of. How does that work ?
Metamoderation presents you with a list of moderations performed on articles. You decide if they were fair or unfair. Go to http://slashdot.org/metamod.pl to see if you're eligible.
Wouldn't have helped -- the person reading them just blindly typed in the digits. Suppose they blindly assumed N*s, but they were supplied a value in kN*s? Both numbers are SI units, but the mission would fail.
In fact, using a random collection of units would probably have saved the mission: they'd be forced to check everything very carefully. Dyne*fortnights, anyone?;-)
I'm still amazed that a highly-educated professional in charge of rocket engine firing would fail to rigorously check units...
(Wow! An intelligent, thoughtful reply. Slashdot could use more of these. Heck, any discussion forum could use posts like this.)
Your points about fair use are good. Andover/Slashdot do have a strong case for fair use. Nevertheless, a reasonable person could have doubts about the propriety of copying the entire Kerberos document -- Microsoft sure did! An honorable and reasonable reply to those doubts would have discussed them with respect to the laws that were alleged to have been broken. However, Robins' response lacked any justification of the alleged improper acts. Rather, in was a list of insinuations about Microsoft's general business practices and strategies. It was the legal equivalent of yelling "Yo' Mama".
And I think that is hypocritcal and lacking in honor.
Deadly force to enforce copyright? Judas H. Priest! Who the hell wrote this? Janet Reno?
Yes. If you ignore the copyright, you'll get a cease-and-desist letter. If you ignore the letter, you'll get a court order and injunction. If you ignore the court order, you'll get federal agents showing up in person to kick your butt. If you fend off the federal agents, they'll surround your compound with tanks. (Did somebody mention Janet Reno?;-) If you fend of the tanks, they'll send in a B-52 squadron. Of course, I don't think it has ever got that far for copyright. Most people give up long before the "federal agent showing up on your doorstep" stage.
And why do most people give up early? Because the government will escalate the situation as far as necessary to prevail against you, and they know it. When the left hand holds a cease-and-desist order, the right hand is implicitly understood to be holding a billy club.
My point was that assertion of copyright by Andover (with respect to their properties) is an implicit threat of unlimited, government-backed force. For them to blow off Microsoft without even discussing the central issue is hypocritical.
If Andover/Slashdot wish to stand against the law for political reasons, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they openly state their reasons, and justify them based on the continuing indigities they suffer at the hands of their opponent. A few insinuations in the form of questions does not suffice.
If you bothered to read the fair use statutes of US Law (link) You'ld see that the posting of the Kerberos spec clearly falls under the right of fair use.
[snip!]
You may wish to do some *basic* research before posting next time.
From the linked legal website (Title 17, Chapter 1, Sec. 107 of the United States Code):
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature
Slashdot derives revenue from the posted work by selling advertising space in conjunction with the display of Microsoft's copyrighted work, the presence of which they endorse by refusing to remove it. .
From the legal website:
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
Slashdot presents the *entire* copyrighted work, by itself, with no directly associated commentary, for the purposes of evading the copyright holder's chosen license.
From the legal website:
the effect of the use upon the... value of the copyrighted work
Microsoft apparently perceived significant value to them from using a particular license, and restricted distribution of the work according to those perceptions. And the restricted distribution did, in fact, have significant value, by reducing competition with Microsoft, thus increasing their potential market size. Why does the Free Software Foundation have the right to restrict distribution based on their goals, but Microsoft does not?
(BTW, thanks for the link -- it's nice to be able to back up my argument with specific references to the USC.)
Please note that I like Slashdot. I've been an avid reader for a long time now. It's just that Slashdot/Andover seem to be sweeping certain legal and moral realities under the rug in their zeal for free speech. It would be a terrible loss if they got fined into the grave or sent to prison. And it makes those "lazy bearded Linux free software hippie bastard geeks" look like hypocrits in the eyes of businessmen everywhere.
*a note: You may wish to actually *apply* legal citations to the instant topic before you slap people upside the head with them.;-)
However, low-power means more than just battery life. It also means less EMI, at least from the processor. That might make for embedded processors in areas computers couldn't otherwise be in.
Not really. The processor still runs at full power, and the electrical signals still have fast rise and fall times. And the variable frequency aspect will make EMI testing harder, because you have to test for EMI compliance under all system operating conditions. Lots of frequencies means lots of conditions. (And you have to test at all frequencies, because there might be a resonance at a particular frequency that greatly increases the EM radiation.)
Now, if Transmeta could only come up with room-temperature superconductors... Now, THAT would reduce heat output!
If they came up with with a room temperature superconductor, they could all retire and live like kings on the royalties. Heck, their great-great-grandkids could live like kings on the royalties...
While Robins' letter to Microsoft thoroughly adressed the trade secret issue, the copyright issue is painfully conspicuous by its absence. One of Microsoft's complaints is the posting, without permission, and contrary to copyright law, of a document authored by Microsoft. I am interested to learn Andover/Slashdot's opinion on this issue, which they have so far ignored.
Unfettered speech with no responsibility is an attractive concept, but Andover and Slashdot are based on restricting other people's speech, through the mechanism of copyright. Just look at many of Andover's properties and associates: Slashdot, ibooks.com, Andover News, Manager's Journal, Internet Traffic Report, and Techsightings, to name a few. All of them base their profitibility (or hope thereof) on copyright law. How happy would Andover management be if someone started duplicating Andover sites, but pointing the banner ads to their own clients?
Even the GPL, the holy document of the free software movement, gets its teeth from copyright law. (You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.)
This is a serious matter: copyright law allows you to maintain your monopoly using the minimum amount of force necessary to compel others not to violate your license. It starts with cease-and-desist letters, proceeds to court orders, and can end up involving physical force -- even deadly force, to maintain the copyright holder's government-protected monopoly.
So, Andover.net, what's your defense? How come you can have copyright, but Microsoft can't? Perhaps free speech? Or is it gonna be Maintaining the Freedom To Innovate(tm)? (Hah!) "We have to protect our Way of Life, and you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette"? Or is the Kerberos extension a domino, and "we have to stand firm to keep all the dominoes from falling and crushing the Free Software World"?
What's the answer, Andover.net? We're waiting, and some of us don't like the hypocrisy we are seeing.
if you moderate messages, you have responsibility for all messages posted on the server
This is somewhat offtopic, but I get annoyed by how often I see this myth repeated on the Internet. Editing a single post doesn't not affect the editor's liability or culpability for other posts. Avoiding editing any posts does not reduce the forum maintainer's potential liability for the posts. As an example, if someone hangs a libelous sign on your building, it doesn't matter whether or not you removed other signs in the past: you will be held equally responsible in either case.
Did anybody else notice that all the other Webby winners listed on CNN were hyperlinked, except for Slashdot.org? I guess Microsoft gave up the direct censorship, and now they're leaning on other sites...
NSI revoking the domain simply because you decided to go elsewhere (and had plenty of time left on your existing legitimate registration) would violate several areas of law:[several bases of illegality snipped]
First of all, your reasons that it would be illegal are wrong. If NSI's contract with you says they can delegate the name to the DNS server of NSI's choice, you have no recourse. You entered into that contract of your own free will, in a marketplace where other options were available from other providers, in many cases at better prices.
Think about this -- what would happen if NSI claimed ownership of Microsoft's or Yahoo's or Altavista's domain name?
First of all, your deliberately misleading use of the word ownership is confusing the issue. A domain name registration is a contract requiring the registrar to return IP addresses of the registrant's choosing when queried by an Internet host, for an agreed period of time, in exchange for an agreed fee. The contract typically permits the registration to be renewed in perpetuity by timely payment of renewal fees, or to be transferred if certain procedures are followed. The contract may have any other terms the regsitrar and registrant agree to, e.g., NSI's new arbitrary termination clauses. It is clear to me that domain name registration is a contract to perform service, not some sort of never-quite-defined property.
So what would happen if NSI started returning IP addresses not of Microsoft's choosing when queried with microsoft.com? What laws would Microsoft invoke? Here's my opinion: NSI's behavior is constrained by political forces enormously stronger than any court decision. For instance, Microsoft could hire private detectives to investigate every single NSI employee. With modern laws, everybody is a criminal, so it won't be very hard to dig up some blackmail material. Or MSFT could hire all of NSI's top technical experts (the recruiter could keep putting gold bars on the table until the employee jumped ship -- they can afford it).
And Microsoft is one of the good guys! They are plenty of organizations (such as the National Rifle Associtaion, or the various Nazi-inspired groups), who would be deeply offended by losing their domain name. NSI recognizes (or ought to) that some people consider munitions a reasonable response to being crapped on by a multi-billion dollar corporation.
And then there's the ultimate recourse if NSI were to offend too many Internet technical administrators: the Internet Death Penalty. In the NSI-goes-totally-insane scenario, a plurality of DNS admins could just take NSI out of their root server list, and arrange for someone else to distribute updates to the master domain database. NSI would have to screw up badly for this to happen, but it isn't impossible, and it serves as a constraint on their actions.
i wonder how this will effect domain squatters who ut up chunks of names with the sole purpose of auctioning them off on ebay, holding them for "ransom", etc
Thus speaketh the news.com article:
In a decision that went largely unnoticed in the press, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled 7-2 last month that a domain name "is the product of a contract for services," and not a type of property that a Web site owns. [...] The majority opinion reversed a March 1999 circuit court ruling. The Supreme Court said the lower court erred when it concluded that "Internet domain names are a new form of intellectual property."
This leasing perspective, and the court decision supporting it, are actually good, because it reflects what domain names really are: a contract where the registrar promises to maintain the name-to-IP address mapping in exchange for payment. Domain names are no more "property" than are phone numbers, or license plate numbers on cars.
This is good for trademark reasons. This is a little complicated, so switch your brain lawyerese mode. Trademarks violations involve the public exhibition of the mark, or the sale of a physical object bearing the mark, in such a way that it harms the holder's business or damages their reputation (AFIK). But registration of a domain name is just a promise to return particular DNS server addresses when queried with the name.
(This doesn't mean that public use of a domain name cannot be infringing. If you deliberately use the name to pretend to be the holder thus causing public confusion, or use it to libel the holder, you have infringed the trademark. The important point is that sticking IP addresses in a database row is not infringement.)
The domain name system has another relevant characteristic: domain names are utterly arbitrary. They are not required to match or resemble anything in the real world. As far as I know, the Internet's governing rules (the IETF RFCs) make no mention of how you should name hosts in DNS. For example, www.ford.com could point to a webserver owned by Daimler-Chrysler containing advice on crossing rivers. Or mail.mcdonalds.com could be an ftp server with J. Random Netizen's pr0n and MP3 collection. There are plenty of examples of this sort of thing, such as the notorious www.whitehouse.com.
Combine registration-as-contract with name-as-meaningless, and what do you get? Noninfringement unless the domain name is later used for traditional trademark infringement. Of course this is contrary to the hopes of the megacorporations, who have been lobbying to make the DNS root servers a branch office of the Ministry of Trademarks. It's funny how unrelated cases can sometimes establish precedents. I for one am grateful to NetSol for so nobly protecting me from corporate greed.;-)
So my take is that squatting and auctioning are legal. And I think the benefits (megacorps can't touch your domain name) far outweigh the dangers (squatters, who can be bought off cheaper than megacorps, and who rarely litigate you into the grave).
(Of course, IANAL. Especially not in land of trademarks, strewn as it is with mines and traps for the unwary.)
<blush> The first time I posted this, I somehow managed to post this to the old "Ranking the Registrars" article. Don't know why I bother getting out of bed some days...
I'm sure that the reason for leasing is precisely so that they can extract/extort more money on renewal.
Thus speaketh the news.com article:
In a decision that went largely unnoticed in the press, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled 7-2 last month that a domain name "is the product of a contract for services," and not a type of property that a Web site owns.... The majority opinion reversed a March 1999 circuit court ruling. The Supreme Court said the lower court erred when it concluded that "Internet domain names are a new form of intellectual property."
This leasing perspective, and the court decision supporting it, are actually good, because it reflects what domain names really are: a contract where the registrar promises to maintain the name-to-IP address mapping in exchange for payment. Domain names are no more "property" than are phone numbers, or license plate numbers on cars.
More importantly, it's good for trademark reasons. This is a little complicated, so switch your brain lawyerese mode. Trademarks violations involve the public exhibition of the mark, or the sale of a physical object bearing the mark, in such a way that it harms the holder's business or damages their reputation. But registration of a domain name is just a promise to return particular DNS server addresses when queried with the name.
(This doesn't mean that public use of a domain name cannot be infringing. If you deliberately use the name to pretend to be the holder thus causing public confusion, or use it to libel the holder, you have infringed the trademark. The important point is that sticking IP addresses in a database row is not infringement.)
The domain name system has another relevant property: domain names are utterly arbitrary. They are not required to match or resemble anything in the real world. As far as I know, the Internet's governing rules (the IETF RFCs) make no mention of how you should name hosts in DNS. For example, www.ford.com could point to a webserver owned by Daimler-Chrysler containing advice on crossing rivers. Or mail.mcdonalds.com could be an ftp server with J. Random Netizen's pr0n and MP3 collection. There are plenty of examples of this sort of thing, such as the notorious www.whitehouse.com.
Combine registration-as-contract with name-as-meaningless, and what do you get? Noninfringement unless the domain name is later involved in traditional trademark infringement. Of course this is contrary to the hopes of the megacorporations, who have been lobbying to make the DNS root servers a branch office of the Ministry of Trademarks(TM). It's funny how unrelated cases can sometimes establish precedents. I for one am grateful to NetSol for so nobly protecting me from corporate greed.;-)
(Of course, IANAL. Especially not in land of trademarks, strewn as it is with mines and traps for the unwary.)
Intel's engineers are humans too, they make mistakes.... Oh, and for all you RDRAM hatemongers: The problem has nothing to do with RDDRAM; the memory controller used in specific motherboards was not shielded properly, causing intermittent lockups.
But RDRAM is the problem, insofar as Intel is ramming it down their engineers' and customers' throats with no regard for reality. Intel management has committed so strongly to RDRAM that they'll practically have to commit seppuku before changing their "strategy". They ought to have looked at RDRAM's risks before committing.
I agree that RDRAM can be made to work. But the reality is that RDRAM has numerous challenges:
RDRAM's 800 MHz frequency (with strong harmonics up to at least 4 GHz) takes highly skilled designers, especially for the PCB. It's one-third the speed of a microwave oven, fer chrissake. A recent article in (IIRC) Electronic Design showed off a 25 GHz oscilloscope for doing RDRAM design work. Few EEs (me included) are skilled at those frequencies, where every wire behaves like an antenna, and where measureable amounts of the signal are dissipated by dieletectric losses.
RDRAM is a brand spanking new architecture. There were no off-the-shelf designs and no industry experience with it. It would be like Ford Motor Company suddenly deciding to put rotary engines in all their cars: a recipe for unlimited risk.
Intel apparently told their engineers "RDRAM only from now on", leaving them with no ready substitute if RDRAM should have growing pains. The memory translator hub debacle is an shining example of poor risk management.
I'm not knocking the RDRAM concept itself, just Intel's Dilbertian implementation of it. In fact, I think narrow superfast busses are the Wave Of The Future(tm). Imagine buying an extra 16 gigs of RAM, taking it home, and plugging in the optical fiber without turning the machine off. Ditto for hard drives, or monitors. Would be much easier, especially for the average person.
I think you're vastly underestimating the amount of current it presently draws...
Well, the present arrangement -- with huge metal-looking brackets and huge gear boxes -- is obviously a compromise to get something working quickly and easily. I'm not a mechanical designer, but it looks like there is plenty of room for improvement. They just have to spend the effort to optimize the design. After all, real snakes are reptiles (not even mammals) so they obviously aren't pushing the mechanical power requirements.
Why, Hemos, why is it good that anyone teams up with AOL?
Obviously, so that NSI can now screw Joe Sixpack on domain registrations. The esoteric registration process had left NSI screwing only the Internet geek demographic.
In order to determine if your Athlon is counterfeit, you have to void your warranty.
Its sort of right: any extra warranty might be voided. However, many places have laws about implied warranties of merchantibility. This warranty is created by advertising an item for sale as having particular properties. In this case, the item was promised as a "700 MHz Athlon", which means, according to the custom of the industry, that it was tested and guaranteed by AMD to conform to their 700 MHz tests.
In the eyes of the law, a 650 MHz Athlon sold as 700 is the same as an empty plastic case sold as 700. Both are equally fradulent. The issue here is fraud and/or false advertising, not a piece of paper with a 1 year warranty. Of course, you might have to sue them in court to receive compensation.
Of course, if there was a sign in the store that said "All merchandise sold as is" or something similar, you won't have any recourse. But seeing that in a store selling supposedly new merchandise is a clear warning you are dealing with shady characters. Run, don't walk, to the nearest exit.
Slashdot Mirror
But that isn't closed source: it is shrouded source, which is more useful. Obfuscation typically involves removing whitespace and renaming variables. However, the architecture of the code is preserved. If I had a choice between reverse-engineering machine code vs. shrouded-source code, shrouded would be the hand down winner. (And you could legally reverse enginer it -- the GPL guarantees that by the "You may not impose any further restrictions..." clause.)
But this is beside the point. Companies shouldn't think of it as choosing between machine vs shrounded sources. They should think of it as customers choosing between documented, extendable systems vs undocumented, dead-end systems.
Hear hear! Engineering is much, much more than just writing code, analyzing circuits, specifying bolts, and similar details. There are things like
These are the hard things, the things that kill schedules and budgets. And they take experience. That kid right out of college may be able to code the quicksort algorithm in 30 characters of Perl, but what if it isn't fast enough? Would they be able to rearchitect the system to use machine code? Would they even know that custom sorting hardware is possible? If they did, would they be able to rationally determine if it's workable?
I'm a fairly young guy (25), but I really value my older colleagues. No matter what comes up, they've seen something like it before. Often, they're already analyzing different solutions while I'm still trying to wrap my brain around a problem.
(For people who didn't follow the link and read the decision...)
"Fair use" is a part of copyright law that lets you make copies of works you posses for your own use. For instance, if I have a license to Windows 98, I can lawfully copy it onto my hard drive for use.
Fair use has one restriction: keeping the copies after giving the original to another person is infringement. Specifically, it is the copies themself that infringe, not the original work, nor the transfer of the original.
The other issue is "first sale". Copyright is a grant of monopoly, allowing the author to control how the work is published. And that's as far as the monopoly extends. Once a copy has been published, the author's only right is preventing further publication without their permission.
That a sale might cause previously noninfringing "fair use" copies to become infringing is not a cause for restraining the sale, and the sale is not subject to remedies. It simply is not part of copyright law. Sale of a lawful original copy is always lawful. It is keeping the now-infringing copies that is unlawful, and the law provides remedies for that.
In the Microsoft/eBay case, Microsoft has no cause for preventing the sale, due to the first sale doctrine. At most, when they know that copies were kept after the sale, there are other remedies that may be pursued. They are not acting out of any right or privilege of law, but out of greed.
Microsoft is committing slander and libel, by making allegations of infringement with reckless disregard for truth. Their claims also create false advertising, because they original copyright works were not advertised as being "not for resale". Finally, preventing sales constitutes restraint of trade, which is generally illegal.
And worst of all, they're doing it in collusion with another company. You'd think they would be more...uh...subtle, what with the Department of Justice breathing down their necks.
I disagree. Classic interpreted BASIC is interactive. You get instant feedback when you do something wrong. In fact, you can type in a command and watch what it does at any time. There is no compiling, no linking, no libraries, no GUIs, and no lists of cryptic error messages. You don't have to master a complicated editor, and there a no makefiles.
This makes Basic very approachable and unthreatening. A "segementation violation" or "unhandled exception" could be a little intimidating to a 12 year old.
Once they understand variables, operators and their precendences, file I/O, etc. they can graduate to a better language. There's no point in teaching engineering design concepts when they still don't grasp the concept of arrays and output formatting.
Sure it does. In fact, it's done all the time. Consider the various hardware standards, like PCMCIA, USB, and Rambus. There is typically a company who holds various patents on the technology (i.e., you can't make a particular type of gadget without their permission). And they'll license all those patents to anybody who asks, on two conditions:
It's not as simple as copyright, because the stakes are higher and patent law is more onerous, and it does require a corporation for the purposes of entering into licensing contracts, but it is doable.
There's also the IBM approach to patents:
In other words, they'll license many of their patents on reasonable terms, if you'll reciprocate. This similar to the copyleft concept.
And the cure? Information: Instructions for virus identification, in vivo culture, inactivation to render the virus harmless, and innoculation. All enabled by the flow of information between scientists, unfettered by govt. meddling. Future health improvements will be strongly driven by the Internet, as researchers exchange DNA sequences, protein structures, email, scientific publications over the Internet.
And your picture of health advances is entirely too rosy. In this day of condom and yeast infection advertisements on prime-time TV, we forget the US govt's old campaign to suppress certain health-related information. The US postal inspectors used to arrest people for mailing information about contraception and prophylaxis. Today's Internet would laugh off such an attack, and people would not be kept in ignorance by a malicious government.
The people's ignorance is the tyrant's best friend. The USSR was felled in part by the rise of personal computing -- a computer in subversive hands is more powerful than a printing press -- plausible deniability is no farther away than the nearest magnet. And the Chinese govt can never emulate Pol Pot, no matter how much they want to -- Tianemen (sp?) Square is not an obscure jungle 5000 miles away, it's a video essentially every Westerner has seen. In the world of today, New York and Moscow are 500 milliseconds apart.
The right to public is the right to publish, regardless of how it is exercised. And the RIAA and MPAA would take away that right if they could -- total control is their ideal. They fought tooth and nail every step of the way, against VCRs, against DAT (digital audio tape), and against CD writers. In many cases, they got riduculous legislation passed, such as the "taxes" that are paid on blank CDRs. And now they want to ban file sharing on the Internet. The danger is not that the Internet will be made illegal, but that a "compromise" will be reached handing over significant control to the media industries.
The present liberty and prosperity of Americans, Europeans, and a few lucky others is not a thing of permanence, to be hung over the fireplace as a trophy. It is constantly being paid for. Sometimes the price is dear, as at Omaha beach and Hiroshima. Sometimes it's the price is labor, as in construction and farming. And sometimes the price is politicking, such as the effort the keep the Internet free.
You would need some sort of obnoxious defensive capability. Not a conventional military weapon, but a trap connected to dead-man switches. If they attack, they get your revenge, possibly from beyond the grave. Like 100,000 barrels of crude oil. Laced with PCBs, or better yet, with radioactive cobalt-60. Or in the case of Britain, with the brains of hundreds of BSE-positive cattle. The possibilities are endless...
But violence is said to be the last refuge of the incompetent. Blackmail of a president/prime minister/generalissimo/senator could be just as effective. Perhaps the web hosting fee could be partially paid in verifiable blackmail material? And of course, a shady ISP would provide the perfect environment for collecting such material.
If one were conspiracy minded, one could speculate whether Echelon will be getting into the clandestine web hosting business. Think about it: cloak and dagger, lots of dedicated backbones, morally flexible, datacenters all over the world, etc. (Better stop -- I'm scaring myself.)
I disagree. The GPL, which can permanently liberate software, is based on copyright. Without copyright, authors would have an even stronger motive not to share sources. Commercial programmers would be reduced to a continual arms race to develop newer copy "protection" methods, because the temporary advantage of obfuscation would be the only way to eke out any money from sales. Shrink-wrap licenses would change to strong, fully-enforceable nondisclosure agreements that must be signed before purchase. All software would be less open than the BSD license.
On the other hand, with copyright, authors can earn a living creating works. And the GPL is possible, which can liberate source code permanently. I personally think copyright is a good balance between liberty and tyranny. (Of course, I make a living creating intellectual "property", so I'm not unbiased.)
Metamoderation presents you with a list of moderations performed on articles. You decide if they were fair or unfair. Go to http://slashdot.org/metamod.pl to see if you're eligible.
A metamoderation discussion may be found at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl? sid=metamoderation.
...while we're being slashdotted. We're in the process of moving to a better co-lo facility, on the produce isle.
Wouldn't have helped -- the person reading them just blindly typed in the digits. Suppose they blindly assumed N*s, but they were supplied a value in kN*s? Both numbers are SI units, but the mission would fail.
In fact, using a random collection of units would probably have saved the mission: they'd be forced to check everything very carefully. Dyne*fortnights, anyone? ;-)
I'm still amazed that a highly-educated professional in charge of rocket engine firing would fail to rigorously check units...
(Wow! An intelligent, thoughtful reply. Slashdot could use more of these. Heck, any discussion forum could use posts like this.)
Your points about fair use are good. Andover/Slashdot do have a strong case for fair use. Nevertheless, a reasonable person could have doubts about the propriety of copying the entire Kerberos document -- Microsoft sure did! An honorable and reasonable reply to those doubts would have discussed them with respect to the laws that were alleged to have been broken. However, Robins' response lacked any justification of the alleged improper acts. Rather, in was a list of insinuations about Microsoft's general business practices and strategies. It was the legal equivalent of yelling "Yo' Mama".
And I think that is hypocritcal and lacking in honor.
Yes. If you ignore the copyright, you'll get a cease-and-desist letter. If you ignore the letter, you'll get a court order and injunction. If you ignore the court order, you'll get federal agents showing up in person to kick your butt. If you fend off the federal agents, they'll surround your compound with tanks. (Did somebody mention Janet Reno? ;-) If you fend of the tanks, they'll send in a B-52 squadron. Of course, I don't think it has ever got that far for copyright. Most people give up long before the "federal agent showing up on your doorstep" stage.
And why do most people give up early? Because the government will escalate the situation as far as necessary to prevail against you, and they know it. When the left hand holds a cease-and-desist order, the right hand is implicitly understood to be holding a billy club.
My point was that assertion of copyright by Andover (with respect to their properties) is an implicit threat of unlimited, government-backed force. For them to blow off Microsoft without even discussing the central issue is hypocritical.
If Andover/Slashdot wish to stand against the law for political reasons, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they openly state their reasons, and justify them based on the continuing indigities they suffer at the hands of their opponent. A few insinuations in the form of questions does not suffice.
Slashdot derives revenue from the posted work by selling advertising space in conjunction with the display of Microsoft's copyrighted work, the presence of which they endorse by refusing to remove it. .From the linked legal website (Title 17, Chapter 1, Sec. 107 of the United States Code):
Slashdot presents the *entire* copyrighted work, by itself, with no directly associated commentary, for the purposes of evading the copyright holder's chosen license.From the legal website:
Microsoft apparently perceived significant value to them from using a particular license, and restricted distribution of the work according to those perceptions. And the restricted distribution did, in fact, have significant value, by reducing competition with Microsoft, thus increasing their potential market size. Why does the Free Software Foundation have the right to restrict distribution based on their goals, but Microsoft does not?From the legal website:
(BTW, thanks for the link -- it's nice to be able to back up my argument with specific references to the USC.)
Please note that I like Slashdot. I've been an avid reader for a long time now. It's just that Slashdot/Andover seem to be sweeping certain legal and moral realities under the rug in their zeal for free speech. It would be a terrible loss if they got fined into the grave or sent to prison. And it makes those "lazy bearded Linux free software hippie bastard geeks" look like hypocrits in the eyes of businessmen everywhere.
*a note: You may wish to actually *apply* legal citations to the instant topic before you slap people upside the head with them. ;-)
Not really. The processor still runs at full power, and the electrical signals still have fast rise and fall times. And the variable frequency aspect will make EMI testing harder, because you have to test for EMI compliance under all system operating conditions. Lots of frequencies means lots of conditions. (And you have to test at all frequencies, because there might be a resonance at a particular frequency that greatly increases the EM radiation.)
If they came up with with a room temperature superconductor, they could all retire and live like kings on the royalties. Heck, their great-great-grandkids could live like kings on the royalties...
<rant color="flaming crimson">
While Robins' letter to Microsoft thoroughly adressed the trade secret issue, the copyright issue is painfully conspicuous by its absence. One of Microsoft's complaints is the posting, without permission, and contrary to copyright law, of a document authored by Microsoft. I am interested to learn Andover/Slashdot's opinion on this issue, which they have so far ignored.
Unfettered speech with no responsibility is an attractive concept, but Andover and Slashdot are based on restricting other people's speech, through the mechanism of copyright. Just look at many of Andover's properties and associates: Slashdot, ibooks.com, Andover News, Manager's Journal, Internet Traffic Report, and Techsightings, to name a few. All of them base their profitibility (or hope thereof) on copyright law. How happy would Andover management be if someone started duplicating Andover sites, but pointing the banner ads to their own clients?
Even the GPL, the holy document of the free software movement, gets its teeth from copyright law. (You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.)
This is a serious matter: copyright law allows you to maintain your monopoly using the minimum amount of force necessary to compel others not to violate your license. It starts with cease-and-desist letters, proceeds to court orders, and can end up involving physical force -- even deadly force, to maintain the copyright holder's government-protected monopoly.
So, Andover.net, what's your defense? How come you can have copyright, but Microsoft can't? Perhaps free speech? Or is it gonna be Maintaining the Freedom To Innovate(tm)? (Hah!) "We have to protect our Way of Life, and you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette"? Or is the Kerberos extension a domino, and "we have to stand firm to keep all the dominoes from falling and crushing the Free Software World"?
What's the answer, Andover.net? We're waiting, and some of us don't like the hypocrisy we are seeing.
</rant>
This is somewhat offtopic, but I get annoyed by how often I see this myth repeated on the Internet. Editing a single post doesn't not affect the editor's liability or culpability for other posts. Avoiding editing any posts does not reduce the forum maintainer's potential liability for the posts. As an example, if someone hangs a libelous sign on your building, it doesn't matter whether or not you removed other signs in the past: you will be held equally responsible in either case.
Did anybody else notice that all the other Webby winners listed on CNN were hyperlinked, except for Slashdot.org? I guess Microsoft gave up the direct censorship, and now they're leaning on other sites...
First of all, your reasons that it would be illegal are wrong. If NSI's contract with you says they can delegate the name to the DNS server of NSI's choice, you have no recourse. You entered into that contract of your own free will, in a marketplace where other options were available from other providers, in many cases at better prices.
First of all, your deliberately misleading use of the word ownership is confusing the issue. A domain name registration is a contract requiring the registrar to return IP addresses of the registrant's choosing when queried by an Internet host, for an agreed period of time, in exchange for an agreed fee. The contract typically permits the registration to be renewed in perpetuity by timely payment of renewal fees, or to be transferred if certain procedures are followed. The contract may have any other terms the regsitrar and registrant agree to, e.g., NSI's new arbitrary termination clauses. It is clear to me that domain name registration is a contract to perform service, not some sort of never-quite-defined property.
So what would happen if NSI started returning IP addresses not of Microsoft's choosing when queried with microsoft.com? What laws would Microsoft invoke? Here's my opinion: NSI's behavior is constrained by political forces enormously stronger than any court decision. For instance, Microsoft could hire private detectives to investigate every single NSI employee. With modern laws, everybody is a criminal, so it won't be very hard to dig up some blackmail material. Or MSFT could hire all of NSI's top technical experts (the recruiter could keep putting gold bars on the table until the employee jumped ship -- they can afford it).
And Microsoft is one of the good guys! They are plenty of organizations (such as the National Rifle Associtaion, or the various Nazi-inspired groups), who would be deeply offended by losing their domain name. NSI recognizes (or ought to) that some people consider munitions a reasonable response to being crapped on by a multi-billion dollar corporation.
And then there's the ultimate recourse if NSI were to offend too many Internet technical administrators: the Internet Death Penalty. In the NSI-goes-totally-insane scenario, a plurality of DNS admins could just take NSI out of their root server list, and arrange for someone else to distribute updates to the master domain database. NSI would have to screw up badly for this to happen, but it isn't impossible, and it serves as a constraint on their actions.
BTW, here's a relevant User Friendly cartoon: Network Totalitarianism - the dot commie people.
Thus speaketh the parent comment:
Thus speaketh the news.com article:
This leasing perspective, and the court decision supporting it, are actually good, because it reflects what domain names really are: a contract where the registrar promises to maintain the name-to-IP address mapping in exchange for payment. Domain names are no more "property" than are phone numbers, or license plate numbers on cars.
This is good for trademark reasons. This is a little complicated, so switch your brain lawyerese mode. Trademarks violations involve the public exhibition of the mark, or the sale of a physical object bearing the mark, in such a way that it harms the holder's business or damages their reputation (AFIK). But registration of a domain name is just a promise to return particular DNS server addresses when queried with the name.
(This doesn't mean that public use of a domain name cannot be infringing. If you deliberately use the name to pretend to be the holder thus causing public confusion, or use it to libel the holder, you have infringed the trademark. The important point is that sticking IP addresses in a database row is not infringement.)
The domain name system has another relevant characteristic: domain names are utterly arbitrary. They are not required to match or resemble anything in the real world. As far as I know, the Internet's governing rules (the IETF RFCs) make no mention of how you should name hosts in DNS. For example, www.ford.com could point to a webserver owned by Daimler-Chrysler containing advice on crossing rivers. Or mail.mcdonalds.com could be an ftp server with J. Random Netizen's pr0n and MP3 collection. There are plenty of examples of this sort of thing, such as the notorious www.whitehouse.com.
Combine registration-as-contract with name-as-meaningless, and what do you get? Noninfringement unless the domain name is later used for traditional trademark infringement. Of course this is contrary to the hopes of the megacorporations, who have been lobbying to make the DNS root servers a branch office of the Ministry of Trademarks. It's funny how unrelated cases can sometimes establish precedents. I for one am grateful to NetSol for so nobly protecting me from corporate greed. ;-)
So my take is that squatting and auctioning are legal. And I think the benefits (megacorps can't touch your domain name) far outweigh the dangers (squatters, who can be bought off cheaper than megacorps, and who rarely litigate you into the grave).
(Of course, IANAL. Especially not in land of trademarks, strewn as it is with mines and traps for the unwary.)
<blush> The first time I posted this, I somehow managed to post this to the old "Ranking the Registrars" article. Don't know why I bother getting out of bed some days...
Thus speaketh the parent comment:
Thus speaketh the news.com article:
This leasing perspective, and the court decision supporting it, are actually good, because it reflects what domain names really are: a contract where the registrar promises to maintain the name-to-IP address mapping in exchange for payment. Domain names are no more "property" than are phone numbers, or license plate numbers on cars.
More importantly, it's good for trademark reasons. This is a little complicated, so switch your brain lawyerese mode. Trademarks violations involve the public exhibition of the mark, or the sale of a physical object bearing the mark, in such a way that it harms the holder's business or damages their reputation. But registration of a domain name is just a promise to return particular DNS server addresses when queried with the name.
(This doesn't mean that public use of a domain name cannot be infringing. If you deliberately use the name to pretend to be the holder thus causing public confusion, or use it to libel the holder, you have infringed the trademark. The important point is that sticking IP addresses in a database row is not infringement.)
The domain name system has another relevant property: domain names are utterly arbitrary. They are not required to match or resemble anything in the real world. As far as I know, the Internet's governing rules (the IETF RFCs) make no mention of how you should name hosts in DNS. For example, www.ford.com could point to a webserver owned by Daimler-Chrysler containing advice on crossing rivers. Or mail.mcdonalds.com could be an ftp server with J. Random Netizen's pr0n and MP3 collection. There are plenty of examples of this sort of thing, such as the notorious www.whitehouse.com.
Combine registration-as-contract with name-as-meaningless, and what do you get? Noninfringement unless the domain name is later involved in traditional trademark infringement. Of course this is contrary to the hopes of the megacorporations, who have been lobbying to make the DNS root servers a branch office of the Ministry of Trademarks(TM). It's funny how unrelated cases can sometimes establish precedents. I for one am grateful to NetSol for so nobly protecting me from corporate greed. ;-)
(Of course, IANAL. Especially not in land of trademarks, strewn as it is with mines and traps for the unwary.)
But RDRAM is the problem, insofar as Intel is ramming it down their engineers' and customers' throats with no regard for reality. Intel management has committed so strongly to RDRAM that they'll practically have to commit seppuku before changing their "strategy". They ought to have looked at RDRAM's risks before committing.
I agree that RDRAM can be made to work. But the reality is that RDRAM has numerous challenges:
I'm not knocking the RDRAM concept itself, just Intel's Dilbertian implementation of it. In fact, I think narrow superfast busses are the Wave Of The Future(tm). Imagine buying an extra 16 gigs of RAM, taking it home, and plugging in the optical fiber without turning the machine off. Ditto for hard drives, or monitors. Would be much easier, especially for the average person.
Well, the present arrangement -- with huge metal-looking brackets and huge gear boxes -- is obviously a compromise to get something working quickly and easily. I'm not a mechanical designer, but it looks like there is plenty of room for improvement. They just have to spend the effort to optimize the design. After all, real snakes are reptiles (not even mammals) so they obviously aren't pushing the mechanical power requirements.
Obviously, so that NSI can now screw Joe Sixpack on domain registrations. The esoteric registration process had left NSI screwing only the Internet geek demographic.
Its sort of right: any extra warranty might be voided. However, many places have laws about implied warranties of merchantibility. This warranty is created by advertising an item for sale as having particular properties. In this case, the item was promised as a "700 MHz Athlon", which means, according to the custom of the industry, that it was tested and guaranteed by AMD to conform to their 700 MHz tests.
In the eyes of the law, a 650 MHz Athlon sold as 700 is the same as an empty plastic case sold as 700. Both are equally fradulent. The issue here is fraud and/or false advertising, not a piece of paper with a 1 year warranty. Of course, you might have to sue them in court to receive compensation.
Of course, if there was a sign in the store that said "All merchandise sold as is" or something similar, you won't have any recourse. But seeing that in a store selling supposedly new merchandise is a clear warning you are dealing with shady characters. Run, don't walk, to the nearest exit.
(Of course, I am not a lawyer.)