Speak Freely is Free (speech) and available for both Windows & Linux. This isn't exactly the same as dialpad.com... both (all) ends of the conversation talk over their computer. Conversations can also be encrypted with your favorite cypher.
In the US, Cable Companies must get permission* to rebroadcast network transmissions. On January 1, WTTG Fox 5 denied Cox cable permission to rebroadcast Fox in Fairfax County unless Cox also carried some other Fox-owned cable channels. Cox didn't want to carry those other channels, so Fox withheld rebroadcast permission and Fox 5 went off the air for a week until the two came to some secret agreement...
This is a fairly recent law (6 years). It's stupid, because there's no reason a broadcast channel would NOT want to reach a wider audience. The Canadians have it right. If you broadcast a signal, everyone should assume that you'd be happy to reach more viewers.
* What's realy stupid is that if the cable company doesn't want to carry a broadcast station, the broadcast station can force them to. If the broadcast station makes any demands, the cable company can drop them, but if they ask for nothing in return, they can be forced to carry them. That was also part of the 6-year old law. At the time it was passed, my cable company had to drop a couple of decent channels (no room) to carry a couple of home shopping channels and a PBS affiliate that only broadcast 8 hours a day.
I believe iCrave has an office in Plattsburgh. I think it's their marketing office, but it doesn't really matter. They are doing business in the US, and that's why they sued the US office, not the Canadian office.
Catching perpetrators using your code in closed-source programs is, admittedly, difficult. As for enforcement, if you assign the copyright to the FSF they will (and have) take legal action *if* you find violators.
You have to assign the copyright to FSF for them to have legal standing in any infringement case.
Robert Heinlein wrote a story about this type of power distribution system in _Waldo and Magic, Inc._ The book actually contains two stories. "Waldo" is about a genius who is called in by the power companies to look into why they've suddenly started having catastrophic failures...
> Three companies can be just as non-cooperative as one company.
Not really. Each has to justify itself to its own stockholders. MS-OS giving exclusive access to MS-Apps can't be justified to the MS-OS stockholders. MS-Apps giving away IE to help sell MS-OS can't be justified to the MS-Apps stockholders.
Read the FoF. Most of the things that look like monopoly behavior are done without any financial reason except to protect the barrier to entry. They put AOL on the desktop, in direct competition with MSN, just so AOL would dump Netscape. They even paid off ISP contracts with Netscape to get the ISPs to stop using it and start using IE. Explain that a shareholder of the MS-Apps company:
"We're giving our product away and, in some cases, paying people to take it. We expect no revenue from this product at any time now or in the future. Fear not! Your losses will result in even larger gains for another company."
That works inside a single company, but why would anyone want to hold stock in an MS-Apps company that behaved this way? You could get all the profit by buying MS-OS and none of the expense by selling MS-Apps.
In America, there exists a hierarchy of courts. The news here is that MS lost in front of the *Supreme Court*, their absolute final appeal. This happened on Monday, which is pretty new.
But the contract doesn't include the promise to buy the service for 3 years. MS was aware of the CA & OR laws and changed the contract in those states. It explicitly says "you can have this money and you have no obligation".
I can see that it would be different if the contract said you had to pay it back, but the law trumped the contract and you weren't required to keep a promise you made. But that's not the case here... in CA & OR, they removed your promise to keep the service.
"You are not obligated to continue as a MSN Internet Access member for any particular length of time."
The CA & OR law only applies to "loans", not rebates. The article gives the example of protecting consumers from buying insurance from car dealers who finance new cars or buying property insurance from a mortgage broker.
The DVDCA named/. as a John Doe in the DeCSS case. Will you guys be personally fighting this battle, or letting others? Will you be donating $ to EFF to help fight this battle?
The blurb seems to use both senses of hacker at the same time.
"China, in the news more recently for sentencing hackers [should be crackers or, more accurately, bank robbers] to death, now looks set to encourage them [hackers, NOT crackers]."
Re:lawyer: no new law needed (trespass)
on
Suing the Spammers
·
· Score: 2
> Permission to send me spam is *not* implied by custom.
That's arguable. *I* certainly don't want spam, but I know some people that actually do. I don't mind commercial email, as long as I signed up for it.
Spam can also be difficult to define. If I publish my email address on open web forums (like this one), I'm clearly inviting people that I have not previously met to send me email if they like. I reserve the right to ignore it, or even delete it unseen. What would distinguish you from sending me email to continue this discussion from a commercial entity sending me email asking me if I'd be interested in one of their products that may somehow relate to this conversation?
The only question is when unsolicited email becomes "spam". There are clearly many cases that clearly cross the line, but if you try and use the judicial process to claim that "spam" is trespass, then you've cut off your nose to spite your face. It will become questionable if I can send you email to continue this discussion, even though your email address is at the top of my screen.
If regulations come from the legislature, the line can hopefully be drawn more clearly (even though I'm skeptical about any legislatures ability to do so).
> Permission to use my server to send *other* people spam...
Not sure exactly what you mean here. By definition, any email sent to me goes across someone else's server (my ISP's, for example).
If I give accounts on my server to the public, I think a Terms of Service contract is more enforceable than claiming trespass if they use it to send spam.
If a spammer, like Christian Brothers, is simply forging headers to *appear* to be from AOL, they aren't "trespassing" any more than if they weren't forging headers, but they are misrepresenting themselves (fraud) and using AOL's name (trademark violation).
Slashdot Mirror
> odd there aren't special icons for say intel or cyrix ?
You mean like http://slashdot.org/search.pl?topic=intel ?
Speak Freely is Free (speech) and available for both Windows & Linux. This isn't exactly the same as dialpad.com... both (all) ends of the conversation talk over their computer. Conversations can also be encrypted with your favorite cypher.
In the US, Cable Companies must get permission* to rebroadcast network transmissions. On January 1, WTTG Fox 5 denied Cox cable permission to rebroadcast Fox in Fairfax County unless Cox also carried some other Fox-owned cable channels. Cox didn't want to carry those other channels, so Fox withheld rebroadcast permission and Fox 5 went off the air for a week until the two came to some secret agreement...
This is a fairly recent law (6 years). It's stupid, because there's no reason a broadcast channel would NOT want to reach a wider audience. The Canadians have it right. If you broadcast a signal, everyone should assume that you'd be happy to reach more viewers.
* What's realy stupid is that if the cable company doesn't want to carry a broadcast station, the broadcast station can force them to. If the broadcast station makes any demands, the cable company can drop them, but if they ask for nothing in return, they can be forced to carry them. That was also part of the 6-year old law. At the time it was passed, my cable company had to drop a couple of decent channels (no room) to carry a couple of home shopping channels and a PBS affiliate that only broadcast 8 hours a day.
I believe iCrave has an office in Plattsburgh. I think it's their marketing office, but it doesn't really matter. They are doing business in the US, and that's why they sued the US office, not the Canadian office.
He can give the key to his lawyers to decrypt.
Did you forget to read the article? His lawyers *did* argue the 5th, but the judge rejected it.
Catching perpetrators using your code in closed-source programs is, admittedly, difficult. As for enforcement, if you assign the copyright to the FSF they will (and have) take legal action *if* you find violators.
You have to assign the copyright to FSF for them to have legal standing in any infringement case.
Robert Heinlein wrote a story about this type of power distribution system in _Waldo and Magic, Inc._ The book actually contains two stories. "Waldo" is about a genius who is called in by the power companies to look into why they've suddenly started having catastrophic failures...
> AOL is telling people what it is going to do -- it's going to be the main internet connection.
There is a difference between being the "main" connection and the "only" connection.
I'm running Slink with a 2.2 kernel right now. Had to replace a very small number of tools that were kernel specific (xosview, for example).
Crusoe is an anagram of source. I dunno if that's why it was chosen or just a coinky-dink.
> Three companies can be just as non-cooperative as one company.
Not really. Each has to justify itself to its own stockholders. MS-OS giving exclusive access to MS-Apps can't be justified to the MS-OS stockholders. MS-Apps giving away IE to help sell MS-OS can't be justified to the MS-Apps stockholders.
Read the FoF. Most of the things that look like monopoly behavior are done without any financial reason except to protect the barrier to entry. They put AOL on the desktop, in direct competition with MSN, just so AOL would dump Netscape. They even paid off ISP contracts with Netscape to get the ISPs to stop using it and start using IE. Explain that a shareholder of the MS-Apps company:
"We're giving our product away and, in some cases, paying people to take it. We expect no revenue from this product at any time now or in the future. Fear not! Your losses will result in even larger gains for another company."
That works inside a single company, but why would anyone want to hold stock in an MS-Apps company that behaved this way? You could get all the profit by buying MS-OS and none of the expense by selling MS-Apps.
In America, there exists a hierarchy of courts. The news here is that MS lost in front of the *Supreme Court*, their absolute final appeal. This happened on Monday, which is pretty new.
> Did the register do anything to provoke this?
/. itself...
Probably just because they're the only news source less reliable than
You mean that after the past 3 "China adopting Linux" stories turned out to be hoaxes, this one turns out to be a hoax too?
Maybe the next time you post the story it will be true.
> ONE DAY after it is first proposed?
/. to propose regulations. The actual date of the "federal interpetation letter" from OSHA was Nov 15.
Believe it or not, OSHA doesn't use
But the contract doesn't include the promise to buy the service for 3 years. MS was aware of the CA & OR laws and changed the contract in those states. It explicitly says "you can have this money and you have no obligation".
I can see that it would be different if the contract said you had to pay it back, but the law trumped the contract and you weren't required to keep a promise you made. But that's not the case here... in CA & OR, they removed your promise to keep the service.
Then do like the article suggests and buy a refrigerator with the money. They'll let you spend it on anything in their stores!
You didn't even read your own link:
"You are not obligated to continue as a
MSN Internet Access member for any particular length of time."
The CA & OR law only applies to "loans", not rebates. The article gives the example of protecting consumers from buying insurance from car dealers who finance new cars or buying property insurance from a mortgage broker.
You have to spend all of the rebate, so no, you can't get $360 cash.
The DVDCA named /. as a John Doe in the DeCSS case. Will you guys be personally fighting this battle, or letting others? Will you be donating $ to EFF to help fight this battle?
Have you looked into PostgreSQL? How does it compare to Interbase?
The blurb seems to use both senses of hacker at the same time.
"China, in the news more recently for sentencing hackers [should be crackers or, more accurately, bank robbers] to death, now looks set to encourage them [hackers, NOT crackers]."
"News for greeks"
> Permission to send me spam is *not* implied by custom.
...
That's arguable. *I* certainly don't want spam, but I know some people that actually do. I don't mind commercial email, as long as I signed up for it.
Spam can also be difficult to define. If I publish my email address on open web forums (like this one), I'm clearly inviting people that I have not previously met to send me email if they like. I reserve the right to ignore it, or even delete it unseen. What would distinguish you from sending me email to continue this discussion from a commercial entity sending me email asking me if I'd be interested in one of their products that may somehow relate to this conversation?
The only question is when unsolicited email becomes "spam". There are clearly many cases that clearly cross the line, but if you try and use the judicial process to claim that "spam" is trespass, then you've cut off your nose to spite your face. It will become questionable if I can send you email to continue this discussion, even though your email address is at the top of my screen.
If regulations come from the legislature, the line can hopefully be drawn more clearly (even though I'm skeptical about any legislatures ability to do so).
> Permission to use my server to send *other* people spam
Not sure exactly what you mean here. By definition, any email sent to me goes across someone else's server (my ISP's, for example).
If I give accounts on my server to the public, I think a Terms of Service contract is more enforceable than claiming trespass if they use it to send spam.
If a spammer, like Christian Brothers, is simply forging headers to *appear* to be from AOL, they aren't "trespassing" any more than if they weren't forging headers, but they are misrepresenting themselves (fraud) and using AOL's name (trademark violation).