OCaml-Win32. If you have to ask what's wrong with the win32 API, you've never had to use it in a language other than C.
Some alpha or out of date binding of wxWidgets or Qt for OCaml.
OCaml programs aren't shorter than scripting languages, and they're limited to a curses interface at best. Together with its speed, OCaml gives off the impression of being a language you'd reach for when you write high performance, low interaction programs---like automated financial trading agents. Not many of us do that. And so not many of us use OCaml.
That works very well until I, who lives upstream from you, decide to dump all my perfectly biodegradable human waste into the water supply which drains down into your well.
If getting water out of my own well was really important to me, I would regularly pay you to dump your waste elsewhere. I would end up being happier paying you + being able to drink water from my well than I would be not being able to use the water from my well at all. Otherwise, I would just abandon the well.
It may not feel fair at first, but hey, I paid less for my downstream property than you did for your upstream one. If I didn't, then either I overpaid or you got a bargain on your property, because someone didn't recognise a premium for having priority access to the water.
If I don't like the idea of paying you off, I could always fork out a bit more for a property further upstream from you.
Or even less dramatic I buy a big chunk of land and cap off your water supply because I decided to open a bottling plant. Now you're both out of water and now you have to pay ME for the privilege of drinking it JUST because I happened to buy the property upstream from you.
If being upstream did really confer such benefits, then the value of an upstream property will be greater than a downstream one. I have to pay you for the privilege because I didn't pay the premium to have a property further upstream from you. If I'd been enjoying free water all along, it's only because I'd been lucky that none of my upstream neighbours have realised this bit of economics yet.
Basically what I'm saying is that your viewpoint is shortsighted.
Not necessarily. It might just be the opposite view to "everything I didn't think to pay for should be free", i.e. "someone has to pay for the costs of everything".
However, I think the GP's position deserves some refinement.
(3) I don't consider water under MY ground to be public property.
The water under my ground isn't my property—it's nobody's property. I didn't pay to have it made, I don't have a better claim to it than anyone else. However, that well in my garden is my property. So, you can take the water under the ground, but not from my well. I paid for it, I should be able to decide who gets to reap the benefits of it. Don't like it? Dig your own well, next door.
And if next door is a property upstream from mine? Well, then it's time to negotiate a mutually beneficial deal. =)
Knuth has created his own currency (as evidenced by amounts being written as 0x$1.00, rather than $0x1.00—see, the 0x is part of the unit, not part of the amount). So, given it's a new unit, he can define it to be whatever he wants.
He's also defined it so 0x$0.01 happens to coincide with a normal cent. Or at least, it does at first. Wait until people spotting his errors decide he's giving 0x$ out too easily and start dumping them in favour of real $. Then, the Bank of San Serriffe may burn through its reserves of real $ trying to prop up the 0x$, forcing it to re-base or float the 0x$. Pretty soon, Thorsten Dahlheimer's 0x$405.80 won't be enough to buy a vowel and he'll be forced to go back to combing Knuth's books for errors in hope of another 0x$ payout to feed his family.
The IOC is a corrupt, bullying, greedy, hypocritical organization that uses trademark laws to limit the free speech and commerce of people who have the misfortune to attend or live near the games.
If I want knee-jerk rhetoric, I'll browse Digg, thank you very much. The Editors would have done better to link to the original CBC article.
From the CBC article:
VANOC said it has no desire to own the phrases and VANOC's use of the mottoes in no way changes how the national anthem is used by Canadians.
VANOC would only challenge the commercial use of the mottoes if a business began using them to create a specific, unauthorized commercial association with the 2010 Winter Games, said the statement.
This is only a trademark. You can still use the words/phrases as much as you want insofar as it's not connected to the 2010 Olympics. They're just trying to cut down on people cashing in on the Olympics without permission.
Whether they should be doing that is another debate. Personally, I think it goes against the spirit of the Games; but if you put a truck load of money into creating something, it's your right to decide how much of an asshole you want to be about sharing it.
The Olympic Games may be an imperfect representation of the ideals it is meant to embody, but it's still one of the few symbols regular people rally around. Abandoning it wholesale would be counterproductive—we'd just end up reducing the mindshare of these ideals in the minds of rich, well-off (compared to the rest of the world) people. Rather, we should look at how we can bring it back on track with all the things it's meant to signify to the world.
Having said that, I smell a Constitutional challenge in the wings. If they had to get a piece of legislation passed to enable this, that legislation just might be unconstitutional.
I don't know anything about Canadian law, but in Australia we had a similar case, Davis v Commonwealth in 1988. The government were all antsy about Australia's upcoming bicentenary (yes, Australia is that young) so they passed legislation banning the use of phrases like "Bicentenary", "200 years", "Australia" and "Founding" without licence from the bureaucracy.[1] It was struck down in our High Court as not being "reasonably appropriate and adapted" to achieving the end goal of celebrating the bicentennial.
Now, this situation is weaker in that they are not banning all uses, just the ones relating to the Olympics. But then, if it took a piece of legislation to get it done, the legislation may have overstepped the boundary of what's appropriate. I hear you guys have a Bill of Rights, something which Australia never had, which should help make the case stronger.
The water industry at least creates clean water and bottles thereof.
What I had in mind were those companies that just capture the water from upstream. They don't create clean water, they just make it more widely available. But anyway, even if that analogy falls apart, the argument still remains.
Are you telling me I can go out and buy a bottle of financial risk?
Yes. That's what all investments are. You buy a bottle of risk, and after it matures you redeem it for your 5c refund (or you sell it to someone else who eventually collects the refund). Theoretically, the money you get back is meant to reflect the amount of risk in the bottle, but as recent events show, sometimes it doesn't work out that way.
Your claim that the financial industry doesn't print more money is only half correct. They do create new money through loans; money that otherwise would not exist. If everyone went to every bank right now and withdrew all of their money, the money in those loans would be new money, no?
That's not creating new money, that's putting old money to better use. A dollar being used in a loan is a dollar not being used by the person who saved it. It's a dollar that would still exist without the loan; it'd just be in different hands. If everyone tried to withdraw all their money from all the banks in the world, they wouldn't be able to because those dollars are with the borrowers.[1] If the Central Bank does not print more money (so the only possible creators of money would be the banks), the banks---unable to physically get their hands on that money---would collapse into liquidation and people will lose a portion of their money.
-[1] Not exactly correct; they'd be with the people the borrowers gave the money to in exchange for goods/services; but the borrowers would be liable for those dollars.
Of course, using money more efficiently does drive up inflation, but that's because economic growth is linked to inflation (mid-level macroeconomics), not because there's more money around.
[in a prior post:] printing more money devalues that same money. Its an industry that, simply by its existence, is self destructive.
That's like saying the car industry is self destructive because a large supply of cars drives down their price. Whilst their actions are devaluing individual dollars, the profit they make from their investments is greater than the devaluation (eg. loan interest rates are always higher than inflation, unless someone stuffed up badly).
Further, The Federal Reserve Bank does, in-fact, print new money. A lot of it. Every year.
I don't disagree with this. I'm just arguing that the financial industry doesn't create money. Central banks obviously do, that's part of their role.
What gave you the right to download and read this post I've written here?...I didn't give you an explicit license to download or read it. So what's to stop me from suing you for copyright infringement (and winning), other than common sense (which, as I'm sure you know, isn't valid in a court of law)?
Out of armchair speculation, I can think of two things that would be raised.
1. The Terms of Service (that link at the bottom of the page). Specifically, under the 6th heading:
With respect to text or data entered into and stored by publicly-accessible site features such as forums, comments...the submitting user grants Sourceforge the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide
Sourceforge is distributing the content. Once the content is in the hands of someone, you can't use copyright to prevent them from reading it. That would require a confidential information suit.
Whether it's binding would be a matter for the lawyers to wrestle over. It's not clearly presented to you when you sign up. But it's there every time you use the site, on every page. So even if you didn't agree to it when you signed up, you may be agreeing to it every time you post.
This argument is applicable to Emacs, since the owners of gnu.org are licensing you to grab Emacs under the GPL. The Windows binary packages come with the GPL anyway (/info/COPYING), albeit not in a prominent place. Not agreeing to it is no excuse, since if you didn't agree to the licence you'd be using the software unlicensed, infringing copyright.
Doesn't apply to the ATI drivers. They don't publish the URL anywhere that's not accompanied by a licence and any URLs that pop up without going through the licence would be accidental. Creeping into your neighbour's house is still trespassing even if she accidentally left her window unlocked.[1] And no, your what you intended to do doesn't matter when it comes to trespassing/infringement.
[1] No, I don't do this. Just thought it'd be an example familiar to/.
2. Implied licence. By posting your comment to a publicly viewable forum, you're impliedly licensing anyone who comes by to, at the very least, do things reasonably necessary in order to view them (download to RAM, reproduce on monitor).
The Emacs example doesn't need to rely on this, since it explicitly comes with the GPL. ATI would argue no implicit licence because not posted in a public place.
In relation to GP;
can it not then be argued, that I also have the right to run and use the ati drivers... without accepting the eula?
Not necessarily. Even if you can make out a right to download the drivers, that doesn't come with a right to run them. If, like the NVIDIA drivers (not an ATI user), they pop up an EULA when you go to install and you click "Yes", it's no excuse that you didn't agree to any licence when you downloaded the drivers. Of course, then the action is in contract, not copyright, and whether they're enforceable in contract is another issue.
1. Get hit with a "frivolous and irresponsible" lawsuit.
2. Deliver photocopies of every motion, filed document and piece of evidence discussed on the blog as part of the discovery process. Anything that might be reasonably considered to be relevant to the case. Use the lawyers' own verbosity against them. In triplicate, just to be safe.
3. Win case. Should be easy, since it's "frivolous and irresponsible", right?
4. Profit! Gets costs on a party-party basis. In the Australian Supreme Court, you can get $1.60 by way of "costs" for each page you photocopied, as long as it was a reasonable expense (the photocopy that is, not the $1.60) to the case. For something that costs 5c, it shouldn't be hard to come out with a healthy profit.
When money is "made" for "sale", all similarly backed money loses value. To be considered an industry, the finance "industry" must create money, thereby devaluing its own product. My aversion is to calling it an industry, when it is strictly commerce; the buying and selling of existing money.
I would suggest that the financial industry does not need to "create" money any more than the water industry has to "create" water. It is an organisation of resources that makes money available to places where it might not otherwise be as easy to get to. It bottles up the risk (which is what the financial industry really deals in) to make it easier for investors to drink, so to speak.
There shouldn't be a financial industry! Industry produces and commerce sells.
By this, do you mean it shouldn't be referred to as an industry? If so, you're losing the same war that pedantics did over "begging the question".
If, on the other hand, you mean screwing around with money shouldn't be done on such a large scale, I would disagree. As has been said countless times, debt greases the wheels of capitalism and the "financial industry" is built up around managing the risk that people won't pay you back. Having a financial industry lets us (as a whole) take on more risky endeavours than not, at lower cost.
Even The Fed, however, can not change the simple truth that printing more money devalues that same money. Its an industry that, simply by its existence, is self destructive.
The financial industry doesn't print money. It makes it more freely available. There's still the same amount of cash in the economy, but it's being used more effectively. Rich people aren't wandering the streets looking for people to lend to and entrepreneurs aren't walking around searching for someone who will lend to them. The only thing self-destructive about it is the massive ego of most investment bankers.
Financial Commerce is a much more accurate term.
Commerce usually refers to the field of activity, whilst industry tends to refer to the firms engaged in that field of activity. Of course, the debate is purely academic.
if we add n redunndant[sic] fail-overs, the total system will fail with probability 1-p^n
GP:
Any number raised to the power 0 is 1. So if you don't install anything, hence n is 0, it will always work since the probability of failure is 1-1 = 0.
P:
Sometimes, pure intuition can be more handy than maths.
Only if you're not good at the math.
The way the G-GP described the system, the number of redundant fail-overs includes the primary system. With n=0, you have no system in place. No system, no possibility of system failure.
If you want Linux to keep its good rep, don't encourage average home users to use it!
You mean don't encourage home users to use it alone. I would happily set my parents up with a Linux box, but I will be the one with the root password and they won't be in/etc/sudoers. Set an Ubuntu LTS release with a cron job to push updates and (with luck) I won't have to touch it for another 2 years. I plan to see my parents more often than that.
At worst, they can only trash their own accounts. At which point, I go "Oh yea, be more careful next time" and set up a new one. If my middle-aged parents, who use the internet for reading newspapers, know how to avoid the most common ways of getting 0wned, so can anyone who is willing to learn. Those who aren't deserve all they get. Sounds harsh, but anyone with something to lose from trashing their user account (other than a few bookmarks) should clue up on how to avoid losing their data, or pay someone to take care of it for them.
On your other point, I agree that Windows is in a bad place—between users who don't know and developers who don't care. That does little to absolve Microsoft of the mess they made. There are things they could have done which are less annoying than asking the user—twice some times—for admin privileges all the time. For example, they could redirect any writes by a limited user which occur outside the user's home folder to an overlay under their ~/Application Settings folder. That way, to the user, it appears like the write happened, but the rest of the system isn't affected by it. Vista already does something similar with its IE7 sandboxing. They just need to extend it to all applications being run under limited privileges. The same for writes to the registry. I find it hard to believe that given all the time they had on Vista, they only had enough time to integrate that feature into one app. Not good enough.
Contracts of adhesion are the type of contract most likely to trigger this doctrine because they almost always represent strongly inequitable bargaining power between the parties.
If MySpace itself was suing her, then unconscionability (if any) would be a factor against them. In that case, you could make a stink about MySpace's unconscionable conduct in inducing her to enter into the standard-form agreement.
However, the prosecutor here is not suing her to enforce a contract, they're seeking to punish her for accessing a computer which did not give her authority to access it under false credentials. The site agreement is just evidence that she was not authorised to access it under false details. Her access to the system under false details is not affected by any unconscionable conduct by the prosecutor, and you'd have a hard time arguing MySpace's unconscionable conduct made her provide false details.
criminal sanctions for breaching a contract are basically completely unheard of.
You're looking too narrowly. Examples of criminal law backing up civil law are rare because you can't consent to most things that are criminal (I can't agree to let you stab me, for example).
Consider, though, an example from copyright law. Say I love the letter "z" so much, I am privately willing to grant redistribution rights to my book for anybody with the letter "z" in their name. Knowing this, you come up to me, pretending your name was Zaphod, and obtain a distribution licence where I say "I agree to let you, Zaphod, distribute my book only because your name has a z in it." You go on to mass publish my book. I later find out your real name is not Zaphod, and that your real name has no zs in it. The distribution licence would be invalid (vitiated by fraud), and you'd be liable for copyright infringement. In Australia, copyright infringement is a criminal offence in addition to being a civil one. I could probably press criminal charges in addition to just seeking damages.
A company can set terms of use for their service as they see fit. People using the service have agreed to these terms (through performance) and are subject to them. If they breach the terms, instead of demanding payment, the right to sever the contract, and/or the right to perform specific performance, the company can instead turn to the government and have the person criminally prosecuted for violating their contract.
Not quite. The law goes more along the lines of "if you access a computer system without authorisation, you are criminally liable". Just like if you paint on my wall without authorisation, you are criminally liable for graffiti. The contract just defines under what circumstances access will be "authorised". If you go outside the contract, then in that law's eyes, you might as well be in someone's house without their permission.
a smart defense attorney would defend this charge on the grounds of the precedent it would set in contract law. If the law is valid, then contract would give MySpace unconscionable negotiating power -- conform to a non-negotiable contract or go to jail.
MySpace would not have an unconscionable level of negotiating power because she could always have chosen not to sign up. It's not like they are the monopoly supplier of air on Mars.
Therefore, this portion of the contract is nullified and there is thus no valid and legal contract language to support the government's claim that there was an applicable access restriction.
That would require a finding that the particular term was void from the start. If MySpace were acting unconscionably, there's no reason to think merely striking out the access restriction parts would make it fair again. More likely, she would be entitled to having the whole contract declared either void from the start, or void from the date of the judgment.
I doubt that this'll survive even at the trial level if her defense attorney hasn't forget everything about unconscionability since graduating law school years ago.
I'm no lawyer, so I ask, how does unconscionability factor into this? I'm guessing you're saying the prosecutor is the one acting unconscionably, since I can hardly see the unconscionability in MySpace's actions.
What is the prosecutor doing that's unconscionable? Unconscionability doesn't just mean "unfair"—you generally (massive simplification here) need to either draw a parallel to something that's already been recognised as unconscionable, or show it's so grossly unfair that the court can go out on a limb and declare it unconscionable. I don't see how either applies to what the prosecutor is doing. It would be stretching the words to say "the prosecutor is acting unconscionably by pressing these charges" if the prosecutor believes she probably (whatever the correct words are) did violate the law. Unconscionability isn't the doctrine courts use to throw out unmeritorious charges.
I do think your conclusion is correct though. The law was meant to stop unauthorised access to computer systems, not to punish people for not giving their true name in cases where they're not required by law to do so. A conviction here would go so far outside the purpose of these laws, all but the most hardcore by-the-words judge would say to the prosecutor "sorry, try again".
If I remember correctly, don't you lose your right to vote if you're convicted of a felony? This consequence would be another factor weighing against a conviction. Providing false details to harass someone is bad behaviour, but school bullying shouldn't lead to losing your right to vote.
I'm not a lawyer, and this is all speculation, but here goes...
Go ask your corporate legal counsel what would happen if the law treated software vulnerabilities as design defects.
Your question is moot. The law already treats software vulnerabilities as design defects. If a piece of software contained a bug that would fall short of the standard of care that a reasonable person would have exercised in the circumstances, you could face a lawsuit for negligence. There is no legal doctrine or statute (that I know of) that says you can't sue over software vulnerabilities.
Luckily, the law sets the reasonable standard of care for software developers rather low most of the time. The stakes aren't as high as designing bridges. The trust isn't as intimate as with doctors. You're probably expected to take about as much care as girl scouts selling cookies--they don't have to be the best cookies ever, just make sure they're not poisoned. The vast majority of the time, the mere existence of a vulnerability won't be enough for a legal action. Especially not when you paid nothing for the software or where the EULA is plastered with disclaimers.[1]
If you're making software to run an airliner, however, the standard of care rises. That's why airplanes don't crash as often as Windows. Most software is not developed under circumstances where a reasonable person would expect, nor would the law demand, such a high level of care. Just don't pretend your software is the second coming of Christ and you won't be sued for failing to perform miracles.
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[1] The law will deem people to have read EULAs, even though nobody reads them. It's like how the law treats you as having read those mobile phone contracts that nobody really reads. So, whether EULAs are binding or not, the fact that you've "read" them means you'll be aware (in the eyes of the law) of the disclaimers. This affects the conclusion of whether the software developer fell short of the standard of care.
... or maybe it's for accounting: you own the copyright for a 2000 titles nobody bought for 50 years, but you can write them as being worth 2,000,000$ each, and then claim, in front of your shareholders, that the company is worth at least 4,000,000,000$.
...and get your ass handed to you by the regulators when somebody realises you've been inflating your assets to unreasonable values. The upper bound to asset valuations has to have some relation to reality, otherwise the next time you get audited (like when an investor starts digging around your financial reports and finds something fishy) your company will, if it's lucky, suffer a massive readjustment in its asset base. If you're unlucky, you'll get penalised by the appropriate regulatory body. If you've been spending the money people invested thinking your company really was worth $4G on parties and hookers, you could end up joining a few Enron execs in prison.
Err, no. Companies aren't stupid enough to throw away something that costs them almost nothing to hold but might possibly give them a return in future. More likely, they'll just stop inflating the value of their IP assets. Instead, they'll start doing the opposite--undervaluing their IP assets to minimise tax. There are only 2 things stopping companies like Microsoft declaring overnight that their IP rights are worth $0:
Investors don't like investing in companies that don't have many assets. If a company has large revenues but few assets, it usually means the profits aren't going to last--ie. the stock price is going to tank soon. Best hold off until it gets some assets under its feet.
Lenders will feel easier about lending you money if it looks like you have plenty of assets for them to fight over should you go bankrupt. The more careful lenders won't be fooled--they'll require a mortgage over some tangible asset--but some lenders will lend you money on nothing but a promise for the right interest rate. More (apparent) assets, lower interest repayments.
I left out generally accepted accounting principles. Auditors are more likely to slap you down for overvaluing your assets than undervaluing them. Just pretend you like to be really conservative with your estimates.
Overall, the tax won't affect revenue streams much. It will depress the reported asset base of IP-heavy companies though. Return on asset ratios[1] for these companies will sky rocket. Clueless investors[2] will start thinking Microsoft somehow became one of the most efficient companies (in terms of generating revenue from its assets) in the whole economy. Their return on equity won't change, but this won't stop speculators forming a bubble around IP companies whose return on asset ratios just jumped. Dot-com again, anybody?
OK, that's probably exaggerating. But still, rather than tossing their assets, companies are more likely to just revalue them to near zero. Have fun taxing that.
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[1] Revenue/Total_Assets, a ratio investors use as a guide to how efficiently a company is using its assets to generate revenue.
[2] Like the ones that thought housing prices never fall, magnifying the sub-prime correction.
Actually, the authors found that the second guess was, on average, worse than the first guess. From the PDF study linked to by the economist article:
This benefit of averaging cannot be attributed to subjects' finding more information between guesses, because second guesses were less accurate than first guesses (see Fig. 1a) in both the immediate condition [ie. asked immediately after], t(254) = 3.6, p <.01, and the delayed condition [ie. asked 3 weeks later], t(172) = 2.8, p <.01.[1]
This suggests their result is not due to the subjects having had more time to think it over or (as they point out) incorporate new information. Rather, their result supports the idea that guesses are partly based on processing available information, and partly based on "feel". If you average the guesses, the "feel" element tends to get cancelled out, and you're just left with the information processing bit.[2]
They concluded that the increased accuracy from having a longer time span between guesses is because recent guesses will bias your subsequent guesses. Longer time between them reduces the bias effect, letting you arrive at a more accurate average. I think given their finding that second guesses are statistically worse than first guesses, this explanation is better than "maybe they just googled it".
I find it curious that they chose to split the group 60:40,[3] asking 60% of the participants to make a second guess right away.
[2] My spin on their conclusion that the result "suggests that responses made by a subject are sampled from an internal probability distribution, rather than deterministically selected", pg 5 of the PDF.
[3] Based on the degrees of freedom they used in their t statistics on pg 4 of the PDF.
I think the GP meant a uniform distribution over all possible values, not necessarily centred around the correct guess. If you repeatedly sample these uniformly distributed guesses, they will tend to converge on the mean possible answer. In fact, if you do it enough times, you end up approximating a normal distribution around the mean. But this is not necessarily the correct answer.
The study seems to be reporting that the mean tends to be near the correct answer. That is the interesting bit. If the test subjects really did not know the correct answer, there is no reason why their guesses should be centred around the correct answer.
I'm not convinced about their result that longer time increased accuracy, though. It could just be that after 3 weeks, 1/6 of the participants were interested enough to look up the answer for themselves. After all, if you really did not know the answer, there's no reason why making another guess 3 weeks later should make for a more accurate average guess. The effect might be due to external factors, not due to brooding over the subject.
Why are users always bitching that their computers are "slow" and so forth? Because Windows lets any application install anything it wants, anywhere it wants, screw with the registry however it wants, load whatever memory-hogging additional "features" it wants, and within short order, the user -- not knowing how to clean up -- ends up with a machine bogged down with ungodly amounts of crapware.
Linux distros, on the other hand, do not have this problem and never will.
Users bitch because they're clueless. Otherwise they would have fixed it themselves. Linux is not immune to this.
The installation process on any Linux distro will let the software do all these things too. Package installation tends to be done under root privileges. Packages can put files all over the file system, screw with/etc and add themselves to autostart[1] all they want. They just don't tend to because the current package maintainers aren't evil.
Imagine a day when Linux is popular enough to be targeted by adware makers. "Ubuntu users: FREE screensaver! Just install this package."[2] The user will follow any instructions they are presented to get the thing installed, including typing their password into the gksu prompt. If you have the user's co-operation, you can sneak memory-hogging features onto a Linux system as easily as a Windows system.
If Linux becomes popular enough for companies like Apple to start making software for it, they might insist on adding their own update daemon to the user's autostart, rather than using the distro's built-in package manager. Not because they have to--Windows has Task Scheduler which nobody uses--but because they want to retain control. They might not like the idea of relying on other people's code. Or they might want the ability to do things like push their own web browser as an automatic update to all current users of their music player.
So, whilst currently Linux packages tend not to load your system with crap like Windows installers are known to do, I wouldn't say that Linux will never have this problem. The current community is not conducive towards it. But there's no technical defence against a clueless user.
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[1] System-wide via/etc/xdg/autostart or per-user via the gnome equivalent of ~/.kde/autostart.
[2] Simplification. Ubuntu users could be told how to install packages like Windows users can be told how to install programs.
But you do own it. It's not like you only have a limited licence to use it, you own the disc. You're free to do anything you want with it, except copy it (hence the name—copyrights). You can watch it once or 100 times. If you while you are watching it 50 people happen to walk past your living room window, they can feel free to stick and see how the movie ends.[1] You can re-sell the disc afterwards. You can use it to prop up your table. You can lend it to your friend if you want.[2] For all intents and purposes, you own the disc like you own a car.
Of course, owning it doesn't mean you can go around barfing up copies of it all over the place. But that's another story.
Footnotes
[1] It's probably a violation of the current copyright law somewhere, but I would argue the justification for it is weak. Arguing that you're not allowed to show a DVD you own in front of a crowd isn't going to stand up in court if they keep marketing it as "ownership" rather than "licensing". If I own a DVD, I can lend it to 50 people one after the other. If I can allow 50 people to watch it sequentially, I can allow 50 people to watch it in parallel. On a really big TV. Or a projection screen. The fact that the studio never foresaw me doing so, and didn't factor it into the price of the DVD, is their fault.
That still wouldn't make it legal, but suggests a direction law reform should take in future.
[2] The MPAA will probably not like you doing this—may threaten to sue you over it—but at the end of the day it's still your right to do it.
Since you already have rights to the work's initial medium,
True, but keep in mind the work's original medium isn't a normal DVD. It's a DVD that is meant to self destruct after 48 hours.
does this mean than hacks are not violations of DMCA?
The adhesive is still an effective technological protection measure to protect the copyrighted material.
Effective—I'll assume the stuff works, otherwise they wouldn't have gotten this far.
Technlogical measure—it'll be hard to argue that a special adhesive isn't a technological measure. It's not like the digital encryption systems we're used to, but if a special adhesive isn't techology, what is it?
Protecting copyright material—duh.
I'm not a lawyer, but considering the above I'd find it hard argue it doesn't fit the description of "a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work".[1] Of course, if you were ever hauled in front of a court, your lawyer would probably have a field day arguing over whether it fits the definition. But it seems to here, so circumventing it still puts you afoul of the DMCA.
They provided technology for the ORIGINAL disk to self-destruct. You are not breaking tech to make copies, you are *preventing breakage*.
By preventing the decay, you're circumventing an technological protection measure. If it seems ridiculous that stopping your discs from decaying might be illegal, it's because of the ridiculousness of making circumvention illegal on its own.
Even if you weren't breaking the DMCA, plain old contract law might screw you over. They tell you the discs only last 48 hours. You buy knowing they're only supposed to last 48 hours. They sell the discs at a discount on the understanding that you will only be able to use them for 48 hours. It seems pretty clear that it's a term of the contract of sale that you're only allowed to use the stuff for 48 hours.
From there, it's not much of a step to argue that the disc only comes with a 48-hour licence to the copyrighted materials on it. Or that by buying the disc, you're accepting a licence to access the stuff on the disc for 48 hours only. After all, if you wanted a longer licence, you would have bought a longer-lasting disc. Either way, hang on to the copyrighted material beyond that 48 hour period and you're in breach of your licence. Which means you're in breach of copyright.
Of course, this probably won't stop you from making backup copies of these discs—assuming fair use rights still mean anything. It's just that you'd have to destroy these backups after your licence expires. Which means you still end up with no movie at the end of the 48 hours.
It doesn't look like the law will let you use these DVDs to burn a movie collection on the cheap, even if you could stop the adhesive from messing up the disc.
References
[1] Pulled from the the bottom of p 5 of the Public Law PDF linked to from Wikipedia's page.
Just to nitpick, capitalism works just [sic] in a lack of scarcity.
Depends on what you mean by "works". Sure, you can apply the principles of private ownership to situations of lack of scarcity. It's just that the outcomes tend to not be so great.
Traditional Adam-Smith-Invisible-Hand-esque capitalist economics say MP3s should be free.
And that's a problem. If they were free, how are you ever going to make back the costs in going from nothing to the final MP3? If you can only sell MP3s at marginal cost, how will you make back the recording band's wages, the studio hire and the cost of lunch for the crew?
The problem with software and music lies in the ease with which they can be copied by others. Traditional economics (Adam Smith's Invisible Hand) doesn't like people using your stuff without permission. When it comes across non-excludable goods (like ideas) or goods which are easily copied (like MP3s), traditional economics fails miserably. You get an under-supply of non-excludable goods because not everyone who's going to use them will chip in to the cost of producing them. You get a lack of innovation where goods are too easily copied because the innovators can't make back the costs of creating new products.
The only solution people have come up with to deal with these situations is remove the problematic characteristics of these goods. With non-excludable goods, the solution tends to be a liberal sprinkling of property rights to make them excludable (eg. patents). With easily copied goods, the solution tends to be measures which curb copying (copyright law, DRM).
Neither of these is optimal, but at the end of the day someone has to pay the costs of coming up with an idea. If nobody pays, the original creator won't have any incentive to develop these ideas. If only some people pay, the response will always be "why me?". If everybody pays, the price will be above the marginal cost and thus not optimal. The traditional view, as reflected by the institutions in our current society, tends to be that it is better that some people miss out because of high prices than everybody missing out because there is no incentive to create such products.
That's not to say that communism is better, just that capitalism with its private ownership has problems with these classes of goods.
It seems like you're trying to decide between either copyright or patronage. In that case, copyright is better than patronage because it gives the author more choice.
Both patronage and intellectual property ensures [that the creator is compensated for his time]. But intellectual property is starting to fail at [ensuring that the public gets to enjoy this product] in more than one way.
If you're talking about a system of patronage with no rights to control the resulting work, then yes, the public would get to enjoy the resulting work. But patronage will provide less money than selling copyrighted works on the market.
With patronage, the cost of writing the work have to be borne by one person/group. With selling copyrighted works on the market, many unrelated people can all contribute to the cost of a work. The only way patronage can match this level of funding is if the patrons managed to locate everybody who might be interested in the work and convince them to contribute to the pot. With most works, this is just not possible.
It may be possible that with patronage, the decrease in funding will cause so many less works to be written that, overall, society ends up worse off than it would have been with copyright protection.
The amount of "compensation" for the creative work, is in many industries currently pushed way beyond reasonable
How do you define what's "reasonable"? It may be true that the current level of compensation is very high. Possibly even higher than other pursuits. But then, if the plumber thinks the author is being compensated too well, they can always put down the wrench and start writing.
And yes, it is the artists who are benefiting from copyright. The horror stories of record companies bleeding their artists dry just reflect the fact that many artists are willing to trade control of their work for the security of a recording contract. Stronger copyright protections allow artists (the ones who aren't completely clueless) to negotiate for larger recording contracts. It's not copyright's fault if artists are too willing to offload risk.
The recording & distribution companies, pay the artist to create works, but now patronage means that the artist loses his or hers rights to the music. I don't think this was the idea envisioned in Intellectual Property.
On the contrary, it is one aspect of what copyright envisions. The artist has the option to sell their right to the distribution companies. They could equally have chosen to retain the copyrights and self-publish. With the internet, that option is becoming more attractive than ever. With copyright, they have that choice.
But Microsoft isn't competing with a free component. They're competing against another "for profit" company: Xandros. Xandros Desktop Pro (which is the closest thing I can find to what the Eee must be running) costs about $100 USD. Add $50 on top if you want to buy patent protection. Without the patent protection fee, that's comparable to a new Windows XP Home OEM CD.
If the software costs about the same, the $50 premium for more SSD space starts looking reasonable.
I don't know how much 12GB or 20GB SSDs cost (they haven't penetrated the Australian market); the only SSDs I could find online were ExpressCard SSDs. Amongst those, there's a $100 difference between Lexar's 16GB SSD and its 32GB one. 16G/32GB are massively different from 12/20GB, but the comparison shows that the price difference may be explainable by the different SSD. Yes, I may be wrong in using Australian prices since Asus doesn't do its manufacturing here, but then neither does Lexar. I can only presume price difference in Australia is somewhat linked to the price difference overseas, where both Lexar and Asus do the manufacturing.
As to the price of XP, an OEM disc of Windows XP Home costs about $100. Xandros Desktop Professional costs $99 to download. Those are end user prices. Asus would probably be able to secure further discounts. The question would then be whether Microsoft was supplying Windows XP to Asus at prices only explainable as an attempt to use their market power. I don't think Microsoft is stupid enough to give Asus Windows XP for free—that would be clearly a use of market power. Short of that, any price they charge may be explained as an aggressive attempt to counter what they view as their biggest threat.
Associating value with price may seem stupid at first, but it may just be habit people learn throughout life which helps them save on brainpower. On many occasions, people may see items which cost significantly more than the alternatives for reasons they cannot immediately recognise. Then, they later find out through research or experience that there are good reasons (not immediately obvious to a newbie) why they cost more. ADSL from either Telstra or Optus here in Australia seems horribly overpriced at first, until you've either experienced or read about the reliability of the cheapest competitors.
Or they might be lazy and assume the product is being sold in an almost perfectly competitive market,[1] in which case the more expensive one must be better because otherwise the company pushing it would go out of business really soon; something I've done in substitution for real research many times before.
People are being offered free things all the time. Free screensavers, which install trojans on their computers. Free newspapers, which turn out to be full of ads and relatively little news (like the MX). Free try-out sessions, which turn out to be little more than marketing sessions for the latest self-help product. In this kind of environment, it's probably natural that they're suspicious of software being offered for free.
Personally, I care not that Linux hasn't spread like wildfire. If we tried to cater to clueless Jane Doe[2] users, Linux would turn into what Windows is today. I'd rather Linux distributors stick to catering to people who don't suspend all logic the moment they touch a keyboard, and are intelligent enough to find solutions to their own problems (and maybe make a forum post about it for the benefit of others).
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[1] A reasonable assumption when you see lots of manufacturers selling a particular product.
[2] From personal experience, a greater proportion of them are female, though that may just be a result of the "Why learn when I can get boys to do it for me" attitude prevalent amongst my age group.
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OCaml programs aren't shorter than scripting languages, and they're limited to a curses interface at best. Together with its speed, OCaml gives off the impression of being a language you'd reach for when you write high performance, low interaction programs---like automated financial trading agents. Not many of us do that. And so not many of us use OCaml.
That works very well until I, who lives upstream from you, decide to dump all my perfectly biodegradable human waste into the water supply which drains down into your well.
If getting water out of my own well was really important to me, I would regularly pay you to dump your waste elsewhere. I would end up being happier paying you + being able to drink water from my well than I would be not being able to use the water from my well at all. Otherwise, I would just abandon the well.
It may not feel fair at first, but hey, I paid less for my downstream property than you did for your upstream one. If I didn't, then either I overpaid or you got a bargain on your property, because someone didn't recognise a premium for having priority access to the water.
If I don't like the idea of paying you off, I could always fork out a bit more for a property further upstream from you.
Or even less dramatic I buy a big chunk of land and cap off your water supply because I decided to open a bottling plant. Now you're both out of water and now you have to pay ME for the privilege of drinking it JUST because I happened to buy the property upstream from you.
If being upstream did really confer such benefits, then the value of an upstream property will be greater than a downstream one. I have to pay you for the privilege because I didn't pay the premium to have a property further upstream from you. If I'd been enjoying free water all along, it's only because I'd been lucky that none of my upstream neighbours have realised this bit of economics yet.
Basically what I'm saying is that your viewpoint is shortsighted.
Not necessarily. It might just be the opposite view to "everything I didn't think to pay for should be free", i.e. "someone has to pay for the costs of everything".
However, I think the GP's position deserves some refinement.
(3) I don't consider water under MY ground to be public property.
The water under my ground isn't my property—it's nobody's property. I didn't pay to have it made, I don't have a better claim to it than anyone else. However, that well in my garden is my property. So, you can take the water under the ground, but not from my well. I paid for it, I should be able to decide who gets to reap the benefits of it. Don't like it? Dig your own well, next door.
And if next door is a property upstream from mine? Well, then it's time to negotiate a mutually beneficial deal. =)
Knuth has created his own currency (as evidenced by amounts being written as 0x$1.00, rather than $0x1.00—see, the 0x is part of the unit, not part of the amount). So, given it's a new unit, he can define it to be whatever he wants.
He's also defined it so 0x$0.01 happens to coincide with a normal cent. Or at least, it does at first. Wait until people spotting his errors decide he's giving 0x$ out too easily and start dumping them in favour of real $. Then, the Bank of San Serriffe may burn through its reserves of real $ trying to prop up the 0x$, forcing it to re-base or float the 0x$. Pretty soon, Thorsten Dahlheimer's 0x$405.80 won't be enough to buy a vowel and he'll be forced to go back to combing Knuth's books for errors in hope of another 0x$ payout to feed his family.
I stopped reading the blog post after:
The IOC is a corrupt, bullying, greedy, hypocritical organization that uses trademark laws to limit the free speech and commerce of people who have the misfortune to attend or live near the games.
If I want knee-jerk rhetoric, I'll browse Digg, thank you very much. The Editors would have done better to link to the original CBC article.
From the CBC article:
VANOC said it has no desire to own the phrases and VANOC's use of the mottoes in no way changes how the national anthem is used by Canadians.
VANOC would only challenge the commercial use of the mottoes if a business began using them to create a specific, unauthorized commercial association with the 2010 Winter Games, said the statement.
This is only a trademark. You can still use the words/phrases as much as you want insofar as it's not connected to the 2010 Olympics. They're just trying to cut down on people cashing in on the Olympics without permission.
Whether they should be doing that is another debate. Personally, I think it goes against the spirit of the Games; but if you put a truck load of money into creating something, it's your right to decide how much of an asshole you want to be about sharing it.
The Olympic Games may be an imperfect representation of the ideals it is meant to embody, but it's still one of the few symbols regular people rally around. Abandoning it wholesale would be counterproductive—we'd just end up reducing the mindshare of these ideals in the minds of rich, well-off (compared to the rest of the world) people. Rather, we should look at how we can bring it back on track with all the things it's meant to signify to the world.
Having said that, I smell a Constitutional challenge in the wings. If they had to get a piece of legislation passed to enable this, that legislation just might be unconstitutional.
I don't know anything about Canadian law, but in Australia we had a similar case, Davis v Commonwealth in 1988. The government were all antsy about Australia's upcoming bicentenary (yes, Australia is that young) so they passed legislation banning the use of phrases like "Bicentenary", "200 years", "Australia" and "Founding" without licence from the bureaucracy.[1] It was struck down in our High Court as not being "reasonably appropriate and adapted" to achieving the end goal of celebrating the bicentennial.
Now, this situation is weaker in that they are not banning all uses, just the ones relating to the Olympics. But then, if it took a piece of legislation to get it done, the legislation may have overstepped the boundary of what's appropriate. I hear you guys have a Bill of Rights, something which Australia never had, which should help make the case stronger.
---- Footnotes ----
[1] Australian Bicentennial Authority Act 1980 (Cth) s 22, para (d) of the definition of Authority.
The water industry at least creates clean water and bottles thereof.
What I had in mind were those companies that just capture the water from upstream. They don't create clean water, they just make it more widely available. But anyway, even if that analogy falls apart, the argument still remains.
Are you telling me I can go out and buy a bottle of financial risk?
Yes. That's what all investments are. You buy a bottle of risk, and after it matures you redeem it for your 5c refund (or you sell it to someone else who eventually collects the refund). Theoretically, the money you get back is meant to reflect the amount of risk in the bottle, but as recent events show, sometimes it doesn't work out that way.
Your claim that the financial industry doesn't print more money is only half correct. They do create new money through loans; money that otherwise would not exist. If everyone went to every bank right now and withdrew all of their money, the money in those loans would be new money, no?
That's not creating new money, that's putting old money to better use. A dollar being used in a loan is a dollar not being used by the person who saved it. It's a dollar that would still exist without the loan; it'd just be in different hands. If everyone tried to withdraw all their money from all the banks in the world, they wouldn't be able to because those dollars are with the borrowers.[1] If the Central Bank does not print more money (so the only possible creators of money would be the banks), the banks---unable to physically get their hands on that money---would collapse into liquidation and people will lose a portion of their money.
-[1] Not exactly correct; they'd be with the people the borrowers gave the money to in exchange for goods/services; but the borrowers would be liable for those dollars.
Of course, using money more efficiently does drive up inflation, but that's because economic growth is linked to inflation (mid-level macroeconomics), not because there's more money around.
[in a prior post:] printing more money devalues that same money. Its an industry that, simply by its existence, is self destructive.
That's like saying the car industry is self destructive because a large supply of cars drives down their price. Whilst their actions are devaluing individual dollars, the profit they make from their investments is greater than the devaluation (eg. loan interest rates are always higher than inflation, unless someone stuffed up badly).
Further, The Federal Reserve Bank does, in-fact, print new money. A lot of it. Every year.
I don't disagree with this. I'm just arguing that the financial industry doesn't create money. Central banks obviously do, that's part of their role.
What gave you the right to download and read this post I've written here? ...I didn't give you an explicit license to download or read it. So what's to stop me from suing you for copyright infringement (and winning), other than common sense (which, as I'm sure you know, isn't valid in a court of law)?
Out of armchair speculation, I can think of two things that would be raised.
1. The Terms of Service (that link at the bottom of the page). Specifically, under the 6th heading:
With respect to text or data entered into and stored by publicly-accessible site features such as forums, comments...the submitting user grants Sourceforge the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide
Sourceforge is distributing the content. Once the content is in the hands of someone, you can't use copyright to prevent them from reading it. That would require a confidential information suit.
Whether it's binding would be a matter for the lawyers to wrestle over. It's not clearly presented to you when you sign up. But it's there every time you use the site, on every page. So even if you didn't agree to it when you signed up, you may be agreeing to it every time you post.
This argument is applicable to Emacs, since the owners of gnu.org are licensing you to grab Emacs under the GPL. The Windows binary packages come with the GPL anyway (/info/COPYING), albeit not in a prominent place. Not agreeing to it is no excuse, since if you didn't agree to the licence you'd be using the software unlicensed, infringing copyright.
Doesn't apply to the ATI drivers. They don't publish the URL anywhere that's not accompanied by a licence and any URLs that pop up without going through the licence would be accidental. Creeping into your neighbour's house is still trespassing even if she accidentally left her window unlocked.[1] And no, your what you intended to do doesn't matter when it comes to trespassing/infringement.
[1] No, I don't do this. Just thought it'd be an example familiar to /.
2. Implied licence. By posting your comment to a publicly viewable forum, you're impliedly licensing anyone who comes by to, at the very least, do things reasonably necessary in order to view them (download to RAM, reproduce on monitor).
The Emacs example doesn't need to rely on this, since it explicitly comes with the GPL. ATI would argue no implicit licence because not posted in a public place.
In relation to GP;
can it not then be argued, that I also have the right to run and use the ati drivers... without accepting the eula?
Not necessarily. Even if you can make out a right to download the drivers, that doesn't come with a right to run them. If, like the NVIDIA drivers (not an ATI user), they pop up an EULA when you go to install and you click "Yes", it's no excuse that you didn't agree to any licence when you downloaded the drivers. Of course, then the action is in contract, not copyright, and whether they're enforceable in contract is another issue.
1. Get hit with a "frivolous and irresponsible" lawsuit.
2. Deliver photocopies of every motion, filed document and piece of evidence discussed on the blog as part of the discovery process. Anything that might be reasonably considered to be relevant to the case. Use the lawyers' own verbosity against them. In triplicate, just to be safe.
3. Win case. Should be easy, since it's "frivolous and irresponsible", right?
4. Profit! Gets costs on a party-party basis. In the Australian Supreme Court, you can get $1.60 by way of "costs" for each page you photocopied, as long as it was a reasonable expense (the photocopy that is, not the $1.60) to the case. For something that costs 5c, it shouldn't be hard to come out with a healthy profit.
When money is "made" for "sale", all similarly backed money loses value. To be considered an industry, the finance "industry" must create money, thereby devaluing its own product. My aversion is to calling it an industry, when it is strictly commerce; the buying and selling of existing money.
I would suggest that the financial industry does not need to "create" money any more than the water industry has to "create" water. It is an organisation of resources that makes money available to places where it might not otherwise be as easy to get to. It bottles up the risk (which is what the financial industry really deals in) to make it easier for investors to drink, so to speak.
There shouldn't be a financial industry! Industry produces and commerce sells.
By this, do you mean it shouldn't be referred to as an industry? If so, you're losing the same war that pedantics did over "begging the question".
If, on the other hand, you mean screwing around with money shouldn't be done on such a large scale, I would disagree. As has been said countless times, debt greases the wheels of capitalism and the "financial industry" is built up around managing the risk that people won't pay you back. Having a financial industry lets us (as a whole) take on more risky endeavours than not, at lower cost.
Even The Fed, however, can not change the simple truth that printing more money devalues that same money. Its an industry that, simply by its existence, is self destructive.
The financial industry doesn't print money. It makes it more freely available. There's still the same amount of cash in the economy, but it's being used more effectively. Rich people aren't wandering the streets looking for people to lend to and entrepreneurs aren't walking around searching for someone who will lend to them. The only thing self-destructive about it is the massive ego of most investment bankers.
Financial Commerce is a much more accurate term.
Commerce usually refers to the field of activity, whilst industry tends to refer to the firms engaged in that field of activity. Of course, the debate is purely academic.
G-GP:
if we add n redunndant[sic] fail-overs, the total system will fail with probability 1-p^n
GP:
Any number raised to the power 0 is 1. So if you don't install anything, hence n is 0, it will always work since the probability of failure is 1-1 = 0.
P:
Sometimes, pure intuition can be more handy than maths.
Only if you're not good at the math.
The way the G-GP described the system, the number of redundant fail-overs includes the primary system. With n=0, you have no system in place. No system, no possibility of system failure.
If you want Linux to keep its good rep, don't encourage average home users to use it!
You mean don't encourage home users to use it alone. I would happily set my parents up with a Linux box, but I will be the one with the root password and they won't be in /etc/sudoers. Set an Ubuntu LTS release with a cron job to push updates and (with luck) I won't have to touch it for another 2 years. I plan to see my parents more often than that.
At worst, they can only trash their own accounts. At which point, I go "Oh yea, be more careful next time" and set up a new one. If my middle-aged parents, who use the internet for reading newspapers, know how to avoid the most common ways of getting 0wned, so can anyone who is willing to learn. Those who aren't deserve all they get. Sounds harsh, but anyone with something to lose from trashing their user account (other than a few bookmarks) should clue up on how to avoid losing their data, or pay someone to take care of it for them.
On your other point, I agree that Windows is in a bad place—between users who don't know and developers who don't care. That does little to absolve Microsoft of the mess they made. There are things they could have done which are less annoying than asking the user—twice some times—for admin privileges all the time. For example, they could redirect any writes by a limited user which occur outside the user's home folder to an overlay under their ~/Application Settings folder. That way, to the user, it appears like the write happened, but the rest of the system isn't affected by it. Vista already does something similar with its IE7 sandboxing. They just need to extend it to all applications being run under limited privileges. The same for writes to the registry. I find it hard to believe that given all the time they had on Vista, they only had enough time to integrate that feature into one app. Not good enough.
Contracts of adhesion are the type of contract most likely to trigger this doctrine because they almost always represent strongly inequitable bargaining power between the parties.
If MySpace itself was suing her, then unconscionability (if any) would be a factor against them. In that case, you could make a stink about MySpace's unconscionable conduct in inducing her to enter into the standard-form agreement.
However, the prosecutor here is not suing her to enforce a contract, they're seeking to punish her for accessing a computer which did not give her authority to access it under false credentials. The site agreement is just evidence that she was not authorised to access it under false details. Her access to the system under false details is not affected by any unconscionable conduct by the prosecutor, and you'd have a hard time arguing MySpace's unconscionable conduct made her provide false details.
criminal sanctions for breaching a contract are basically completely unheard of.
You're looking too narrowly. Examples of criminal law backing up civil law are rare because you can't consent to most things that are criminal (I can't agree to let you stab me, for example).
Consider, though, an example from copyright law. Say I love the letter "z" so much, I am privately willing to grant redistribution rights to my book for anybody with the letter "z" in their name. Knowing this, you come up to me, pretending your name was Zaphod, and obtain a distribution licence where I say "I agree to let you, Zaphod, distribute my book only because your name has a z in it." You go on to mass publish my book. I later find out your real name is not Zaphod, and that your real name has no zs in it. The distribution licence would be invalid (vitiated by fraud), and you'd be liable for copyright infringement. In Australia, copyright infringement is a criminal offence in addition to being a civil one. I could probably press criminal charges in addition to just seeking damages.
A company can set terms of use for their service as they see fit. People using the service have agreed to these terms (through performance) and are subject to them. If they breach the terms, instead of demanding payment, the right to sever the contract, and/or the right to perform specific performance, the company can instead turn to the government and have the person criminally prosecuted for violating their contract.
Not quite. The law goes more along the lines of "if you access a computer system without authorisation, you are criminally liable". Just like if you paint on my wall without authorisation, you are criminally liable for graffiti. The contract just defines under what circumstances access will be "authorised". If you go outside the contract, then in that law's eyes, you might as well be in someone's house without their permission.
a smart defense attorney would defend this charge on the grounds of the precedent it would set in contract law. If the law is valid, then contract would give MySpace unconscionable negotiating power -- conform to a non-negotiable contract or go to jail.
MySpace would not have an unconscionable level of negotiating power because she could always have chosen not to sign up. It's not like they are the monopoly supplier of air on Mars.
Therefore, this portion of the contract is nullified and there is thus no valid and legal contract language to support the government's claim that there was an applicable access restriction.
That would require a finding that the particular term was void from the start. If MySpace were acting unconscionably, there's no reason to think merely striking out the access restriction parts would make it fair again. More likely, she would be entitled to having the whole contract declared either void from the start, or void from the date of the judgment.
I doubt that this'll survive even at the trial level if her defense attorney hasn't forget everything about unconscionability since graduating law school years ago.
I'm no lawyer, so I ask, how does unconscionability factor into this? I'm guessing you're saying the prosecutor is the one acting unconscionably, since I can hardly see the unconscionability in MySpace's actions.
What is the prosecutor doing that's unconscionable? Unconscionability doesn't just mean "unfair"—you generally (massive simplification here) need to either draw a parallel to something that's already been recognised as unconscionable, or show it's so grossly unfair that the court can go out on a limb and declare it unconscionable. I don't see how either applies to what the prosecutor is doing. It would be stretching the words to say "the prosecutor is acting unconscionably by pressing these charges" if the prosecutor believes she probably (whatever the correct words are) did violate the law. Unconscionability isn't the doctrine courts use to throw out unmeritorious charges.
I do think your conclusion is correct though. The law was meant to stop unauthorised access to computer systems, not to punish people for not giving their true name in cases where they're not required by law to do so. A conviction here would go so far outside the purpose of these laws, all but the most hardcore by-the-words judge would say to the prosecutor "sorry, try again".
If I remember correctly, don't you lose your right to vote if you're convicted of a felony? This consequence would be another factor weighing against a conviction. Providing false details to harass someone is bad behaviour, but school bullying shouldn't lead to losing your right to vote.
I'm not a lawyer, and this is all speculation, but here goes...
Go ask your corporate legal counsel what would happen if the law treated software vulnerabilities as design defects.
Your question is moot. The law already treats software vulnerabilities as design defects. If a piece of software contained a bug that would fall short of the standard of care that a reasonable person would have exercised in the circumstances, you could face a lawsuit for negligence. There is no legal doctrine or statute (that I know of) that says you can't sue over software vulnerabilities.
Luckily, the law sets the reasonable standard of care for software developers rather low most of the time. The stakes aren't as high as designing bridges. The trust isn't as intimate as with doctors. You're probably expected to take about as much care as girl scouts selling cookies--they don't have to be the best cookies ever, just make sure they're not poisoned. The vast majority of the time, the mere existence of a vulnerability won't be enough for a legal action. Especially not when you paid nothing for the software or where the EULA is plastered with disclaimers.[1]
If you're making software to run an airliner, however, the standard of care rises. That's why airplanes don't crash as often as Windows. Most software is not developed under circumstances where a reasonable person would expect, nor would the law demand, such a high level of care. Just don't pretend your software is the second coming of Christ and you won't be sued for failing to perform miracles.
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[1] The law will deem people to have read EULAs, even though nobody reads them. It's like how the law treats you as having read those mobile phone contracts that nobody really reads. So, whether EULAs are binding or not, the fact that you've "read" them means you'll be aware (in the eyes of the law) of the disclaimers. This affects the conclusion of whether the software developer fell short of the standard of care.
...and get your ass handed to you by the regulators when somebody realises you've been inflating your assets to unreasonable values. The upper bound to asset valuations has to have some relation to reality, otherwise the next time you get audited (like when an investor starts digging around your financial reports and finds something fishy) your company will, if it's lucky, suffer a massive readjustment in its asset base. If you're unlucky, you'll get penalised by the appropriate regulatory body. If you've been spending the money people invested thinking your company really was worth $4G on parties and hookers, you could end up joining a few Enron execs in prison.
Err, no. Companies aren't stupid enough to throw away something that costs them almost nothing to hold but might possibly give them a return in future. More likely, they'll just stop inflating the value of their IP assets. Instead, they'll start doing the opposite--undervaluing their IP assets to minimise tax. There are only 2 things stopping companies like Microsoft declaring overnight that their IP rights are worth $0:
I left out generally accepted accounting principles. Auditors are more likely to slap you down for overvaluing your assets than undervaluing them. Just pretend you like to be really conservative with your estimates.
Overall, the tax won't affect revenue streams much. It will depress the reported asset base of IP-heavy companies though. Return on asset ratios[1] for these companies will sky rocket. Clueless investors[2] will start thinking Microsoft somehow became one of the most efficient companies (in terms of generating revenue from its assets) in the whole economy. Their return on equity won't change, but this won't stop speculators forming a bubble around IP companies whose return on asset ratios just jumped. Dot-com again, anybody?
OK, that's probably exaggerating. But still, rather than tossing their assets, companies are more likely to just revalue them to near zero. Have fun taxing that.
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[1] Revenue/Total_Assets, a ratio investors use as a guide to how efficiently a company is using its assets to generate revenue.
[2] Like the ones that thought housing prices never fall, magnifying the sub-prime correction.
Actually, the authors found that the second guess was, on average, worse than the first guess. From the PDF study linked to by the economist article:
This benefit of averaging cannot be attributed to subjects' finding more information between guesses, because second guesses were less accurate than first guesses (see Fig. 1a) in both the immediate condition [ie. asked immediately after], t(254) = 3.6, p < .01, and the delayed condition [ie. asked 3 weeks later], t(172) = 2.8, p < .01.[1]
This suggests their result is not due to the subjects having had more time to think it over or (as they point out) incorporate new information. Rather, their result supports the idea that guesses are partly based on processing available information, and partly based on "feel". If you average the guesses, the "feel" element tends to get cancelled out, and you're just left with the information processing bit.[2]
They concluded that the increased accuracy from having a longer time span between guesses is because recent guesses will bias your subsequent guesses. Longer time between them reduces the bias effect, letting you arrive at a more accurate average. I think given their finding that second guesses are statistically worse than first guesses, this explanation is better than "maybe they just googled it".
I find it curious that they chose to split the group 60:40,[3] asking 60% of the participants to make a second guess right away.
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[1] Pg 4 of the PDF
[2] My spin on their conclusion that the result "suggests that responses made by a subject are sampled from an internal probability distribution, rather than deterministically selected", pg 5 of the PDF.
[3] Based on the degrees of freedom they used in their t statistics on pg 4 of the PDF.
I think the GP meant a uniform distribution over all possible values, not necessarily centred around the correct guess. If you repeatedly sample these uniformly distributed guesses, they will tend to converge on the mean possible answer. In fact, if you do it enough times, you end up approximating a normal distribution around the mean. But this is not necessarily the correct answer.
The study seems to be reporting that the mean tends to be near the correct answer. That is the interesting bit. If the test subjects really did not know the correct answer, there is no reason why their guesses should be centred around the correct answer.
I'm not convinced about their result that longer time increased accuracy, though. It could just be that after 3 weeks, 1/6 of the participants were interested enough to look up the answer for themselves. After all, if you really did not know the answer, there's no reason why making another guess 3 weeks later should make for a more accurate average guess. The effect might be due to external factors, not due to brooding over the subject.
Why are users always bitching that their computers are "slow" and so forth? Because Windows lets any application install anything it wants, anywhere it wants, screw with the registry however it wants, load whatever memory-hogging additional "features" it wants, and within short order, the user -- not knowing how to clean up -- ends up with a machine bogged down with ungodly amounts of crapware.
Linux distros, on the other hand, do not have this problem and never will.
Users bitch because they're clueless. Otherwise they would have fixed it themselves. Linux is not immune to this.
The installation process on any Linux distro will let the software do all these things too. Package installation tends to be done under root privileges. Packages can put files all over the file system, screw with /etc and add themselves to autostart[1] all they want. They just don't tend to because the current package maintainers aren't evil.
Imagine a day when Linux is popular enough to be targeted by adware makers. "Ubuntu users: FREE screensaver! Just install this package."[2] The user will follow any instructions they are presented to get the thing installed, including typing their password into the gksu prompt. If you have the user's co-operation, you can sneak memory-hogging features onto a Linux system as easily as a Windows system.
If Linux becomes popular enough for companies like Apple to start making software for it, they might insist on adding their own update daemon to the user's autostart, rather than using the distro's built-in package manager. Not because they have to--Windows has Task Scheduler which nobody uses--but because they want to retain control. They might not like the idea of relying on other people's code. Or they might want the ability to do things like push their own web browser as an automatic update to all current users of their music player.
So, whilst currently Linux packages tend not to load your system with crap like Windows installers are known to do, I wouldn't say that Linux will never have this problem. The current community is not conducive towards it. But there's no technical defence against a clueless user.
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[1] System-wide via /etc/xdg/autostart or per-user via the gnome equivalent of ~/.kde/autostart.
[2] Simplification. Ubuntu users could be told how to install packages like Windows users can be told how to install programs.
But you do own it. It's not like you only have a limited licence to use it, you own the disc. You're free to do anything you want with it, except copy it (hence the name—copyrights). You can watch it once or 100 times. If you while you are watching it 50 people happen to walk past your living room window, they can feel free to stick and see how the movie ends.[1] You can re-sell the disc afterwards. You can use it to prop up your table. You can lend it to your friend if you want.[2] For all intents and purposes, you own the disc like you own a car.
Of course, owning it doesn't mean you can go around barfing up copies of it all over the place. But that's another story.
Footnotes
[1] It's probably a violation of the current copyright law somewhere, but I would argue the justification for it is weak. Arguing that you're not allowed to show a DVD you own in front of a crowd isn't going to stand up in court if they keep marketing it as "ownership" rather than "licensing". If I own a DVD, I can lend it to 50 people one after the other. If I can allow 50 people to watch it sequentially, I can allow 50 people to watch it in parallel. On a really big TV. Or a projection screen. The fact that the studio never foresaw me doing so, and didn't factor it into the price of the DVD, is their fault.
That still wouldn't make it legal, but suggests a direction law reform should take in future.
[2] The MPAA will probably not like you doing this—may threaten to sue you over it—but at the end of the day it's still your right to do it.
True, but keep in mind the work's original medium isn't a normal DVD. It's a DVD that is meant to self destruct after 48 hours.
does this mean than hacks are not violations of DMCA?The adhesive is still an effective technological protection measure to protect the copyrighted material.
I'm not a lawyer, but considering the above I'd find it hard argue it doesn't fit the description of "a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work".[1] Of course, if you were ever hauled in front of a court, your lawyer would probably have a field day arguing over whether it fits the definition. But it seems to here, so circumventing it still puts you afoul of the DMCA.
They provided technology for the ORIGINAL disk to self-destruct. You are not breaking tech to make copies, you are *preventing breakage*.By preventing the decay, you're circumventing an technological protection measure. If it seems ridiculous that stopping your discs from decaying might be illegal, it's because of the ridiculousness of making circumvention illegal on its own.
Even if you weren't breaking the DMCA, plain old contract law might screw you over. They tell you the discs only last 48 hours. You buy knowing they're only supposed to last 48 hours. They sell the discs at a discount on the understanding that you will only be able to use them for 48 hours. It seems pretty clear that it's a term of the contract of sale that you're only allowed to use the stuff for 48 hours.
From there, it's not much of a step to argue that the disc only comes with a 48-hour licence to the copyrighted materials on it. Or that by buying the disc, you're accepting a licence to access the stuff on the disc for 48 hours only. After all, if you wanted a longer licence, you would have bought a longer-lasting disc. Either way, hang on to the copyrighted material beyond that 48 hour period and you're in breach of your licence. Which means you're in breach of copyright.
Of course, this probably won't stop you from making backup copies of these discs—assuming fair use rights still mean anything. It's just that you'd have to destroy these backups after your licence expires. Which means you still end up with no movie at the end of the 48 hours.
It doesn't look like the law will let you use these DVDs to burn a movie collection on the cheap, even if you could stop the adhesive from messing up the disc.
References
Just to nitpick, capitalism works just [sic] in a lack of scarcity.
Depends on what you mean by "works". Sure, you can apply the principles of private ownership to situations of lack of scarcity. It's just that the outcomes tend to not be so great.
Traditional Adam-Smith-Invisible-Hand-esque capitalist economics say MP3s should be free.
And that's a problem. If they were free, how are you ever going to make back the costs in going from nothing to the final MP3? If you can only sell MP3s at marginal cost, how will you make back the recording band's wages, the studio hire and the cost of lunch for the crew?
The problem with software and music lies in the ease with which they can be copied by others. Traditional economics (Adam Smith's Invisible Hand) doesn't like people using your stuff without permission. When it comes across non-excludable goods (like ideas) or goods which are easily copied (like MP3s), traditional economics fails miserably. You get an under-supply of non-excludable goods because not everyone who's going to use them will chip in to the cost of producing them. You get a lack of innovation where goods are too easily copied because the innovators can't make back the costs of creating new products.
The only solution people have come up with to deal with these situations is remove the problematic characteristics of these goods. With non-excludable goods, the solution tends to be a liberal sprinkling of property rights to make them excludable (eg. patents). With easily copied goods, the solution tends to be measures which curb copying (copyright law, DRM).
Neither of these is optimal, but at the end of the day someone has to pay the costs of coming up with an idea. If nobody pays, the original creator won't have any incentive to develop these ideas. If only some people pay, the response will always be "why me?". If everybody pays, the price will be above the marginal cost and thus not optimal. The traditional view, as reflected by the institutions in our current society, tends to be that it is better that some people miss out because of high prices than everybody missing out because there is no incentive to create such products.
That's not to say that communism is better, just that capitalism with its private ownership has problems with these classes of goods.
If you're talking about a system of patronage with no rights to control the resulting work, then yes, the public would get to enjoy the resulting work. But patronage will provide less money than selling copyrighted works on the market.
With patronage, the cost of writing the work have to be borne by one person/group. With selling copyrighted works on the market, many unrelated people can all contribute to the cost of a work. The only way patronage can match this level of funding is if the patrons managed to locate everybody who might be interested in the work and convince them to contribute to the pot. With most works, this is just not possible.
It may be possible that with patronage, the decrease in funding will cause so many less works to be written that, overall, society ends up worse off than it would have been with copyright protection.
The amount of "compensation" for the creative work, is in many industries currently pushed way beyond reasonableHow do you define what's "reasonable"? It may be true that the current level of compensation is very high. Possibly even higher than other pursuits. But then, if the plumber thinks the author is being compensated too well, they can always put down the wrench and start writing.
And yes, it is the artists who are benefiting from copyright. The horror stories of record companies bleeding their artists dry just reflect the fact that many artists are willing to trade control of their work for the security of a recording contract. Stronger copyright protections allow artists (the ones who aren't completely clueless) to negotiate for larger recording contracts. It's not copyright's fault if artists are too willing to offload risk.
The recording & distribution companies, pay the artist to create works, but now patronage means that the artist loses his or hers rights to the music. I don't think this was the idea envisioned in Intellectual Property.On the contrary, it is one aspect of what copyright envisions. The artist has the option to sell their right to the distribution companies. They could equally have chosen to retain the copyrights and self-publish. With the internet, that option is becoming more attractive than ever. With copyright, they have that choice.
But Microsoft isn't competing with a free component. They're competing against another "for profit" company: Xandros. Xandros Desktop Pro (which is the closest thing I can find to what the Eee must be running) costs about $100 USD. Add $50 on top if you want to buy patent protection. Without the patent protection fee, that's comparable to a new Windows XP Home OEM CD.
If the software costs about the same, the $50 premium for more SSD space starts looking reasonable.
We have something similar here in Australia too, our Trade Practices Act 1975 (Vic) s 46—Misuse of market power. It'd be difficult to prove MS wouldn't be have been able to do this without their market power, though.
I don't know how much 12GB or 20GB SSDs cost (they haven't penetrated the Australian market); the only SSDs I could find online were ExpressCard SSDs. Amongst those, there's a $100 difference between Lexar's 16GB SSD and its 32GB one. 16G/32GB are massively different from 12/20GB, but the comparison shows that the price difference may be explainable by the different SSD. Yes, I may be wrong in using Australian prices since Asus doesn't do its manufacturing here, but then neither does Lexar. I can only presume price difference in Australia is somewhat linked to the price difference overseas, where both Lexar and Asus do the manufacturing.
As to the price of XP, an OEM disc of Windows XP Home costs about $100. Xandros Desktop Professional costs $99 to download. Those are end user prices. Asus would probably be able to secure further discounts. The question would then be whether Microsoft was supplying Windows XP to Asus at prices only explainable as an attempt to use their market power. I don't think Microsoft is stupid enough to give Asus Windows XP for free—that would be clearly a use of market power. Short of that, any price they charge may be explained as an aggressive attempt to counter what they view as their biggest threat.
Associating value with price may seem stupid at first, but it may just be habit people learn throughout life which helps them save on brainpower. On many occasions, people may see items which cost significantly more than the alternatives for reasons they cannot immediately recognise. Then, they later find out through research or experience that there are good reasons (not immediately obvious to a newbie) why they cost more. ADSL from either Telstra or Optus here in Australia seems horribly overpriced at first, until you've either experienced or read about the reliability of the cheapest competitors.
Or they might be lazy and assume the product is being sold in an almost perfectly competitive market,[1] in which case the more expensive one must be better because otherwise the company pushing it would go out of business really soon; something I've done in substitution for real research many times before.
People are being offered free things all the time. Free screensavers, which install trojans on their computers. Free newspapers, which turn out to be full of ads and relatively little news (like the MX). Free try-out sessions, which turn out to be little more than marketing sessions for the latest self-help product. In this kind of environment, it's probably natural that they're suspicious of software being offered for free.
Personally, I care not that Linux hasn't spread like wildfire. If we tried to cater to clueless Jane Doe[2] users, Linux would turn into what Windows is today. I'd rather Linux distributors stick to catering to people who don't suspend all logic the moment they touch a keyboard, and are intelligent enough to find solutions to their own problems (and maybe make a forum post about it for the benefit of others).
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[1] A reasonable assumption when you see lots of manufacturers selling a particular product.
[2] From personal experience, a greater proportion of them are female, though that may just be a result of the "Why learn when I can get boys to do it for me" attitude prevalent amongst my age group.