This is a passable explanation for why the majority of code is bug-infested crap. The coders who write quality code aren't as prolific as the ones who don't care as long as they can sucker the QA department into beleiving the code "works".
Rodham is her maiden name. Her middle name, as near as I can tell, is Diane.
"That's how she wanted to be referred to when Bill Clinton took presidential office."
Good point; the reason people refer to her using her maiden name is because she expressed that preference. How does that relate to the question of why someone would conspicuously insert Obama's middle name?
"You still see it in articles referring to her today."
"the non-US Press . . . at least they told the truth about the rush to war in Iraq"
You can slander the US Press all you like, but they also told the truth about the rush to war in Iraq.
In fact, there were US journalists presenting both points of view, exactly as you'd expect in a free press. Was the same true in the French media, or was it all one-sided America-bashing? Unlike you, I won't pretend to know what the media was doing in a country where I don't live.
But the really surprising thing is, based on the number of responses you drew with this comment, the deflection of attention to the US press seems to have been pretty effective. The topic wasn't whether French media were more or less free than US press, but rather whether they were the embodiment of free expression.
What makes you think that? Keep in mind that "freedom of speech" is just a label, and in practice many forms of expression are protected as part of the right to free speech - not just verbal utterances. For example, books, leaflets, and other written materials, while not literally "speech", are nonetheless protected by freedom of speech.
A more accurate, but for some reason less-used, description is "freedom of expression".
"Second, religion is a private thing of anyone. No reason to demonstratively exibit it to everyone"
So you get to decide for me what I should keep private? You get to decide for me whether there's a reason for a particular act of expression? Sounds like you don't like freedom of speech much at all, really.
"And third, a truly secular country doesn't endorce a particular religion"
So, I should only be allowed to express those views that my country endorses? If the country doesn't endorse a view, then I can be forbidden to express it?
"'but I can't think of a time when a corporation patented something bad soley as a way of preventing someone from using it'
I think you'll find that a cursory look at Pharmaceutical patents will reveal a large number of cures that no big player in medical marketplace would ever want to see in the wild, let alone see a vast population of people in need have access to at affordable prices"
The drug companies are not trying to prevent the poor from using these treatments. They are, in MSF's views, not doing as much as they could to provide access to them. There's a huge difference. What MSF wants is for them to be produced (and priced) as generics prior to patent expiration. You can argue the merits of that idea, but in no way does it point to the level of immorality and conspiracy that you've implied by presenting this as a response to GP.
Part of MSF's job is to encourage others to make philanthropic gestures. They're asking pharma companies to donate resources to a humanitarian cause; that's fine. But, painting it as a moral imperitive that the company do so is pushing it a bit. If you feel strongly that poor populations should have more access to these drugs, you could spend some of your time and money helping raise funds to buy them and send them there. But it's always easier to tell someone else to donate what's theirs, than to donate what's yours, isn't it?
"Look also at Microsoft research: they come up with some extraordinary technologies/solutions that would no doubt undermine the broader, stable market for their existing inferior products if available on a desktop near you."
Citation needed.
You know what, screw that - what you're saying doesn't make sense. If I develop a technology that I want to suppress, the last thing I'm going to do is patent it, thereby ensuring that in 17 years it will be on the market in my competitors' hands.
"I believe that all these nonsense Apple patents relating to advertising may reveal that Apple may soon ship an ad-encumbered version of it's OS for Intel hardware more generic than that already in the Apple line."
Maybe. Of course that's exactly the opposite of what GP said he's never seen happen, so I'm not sure what your point is....
Actually that's completely incorrect. Why is it that every time/. sees a patent, we get a dozen posters who can't be bothered to read the patent claims yet talk like they know what the patent covers?
Yes, the patent has something to do with advertising and encouraging users to watch it. No, that doesn't mean that everything that's ever been done to encourage people to watch an ad would be covered or, equivalently, can stand as prior art.
Every independent claim in the patent talks about a featuer in an operating system being disabled, then an ad being displayed, then when teh ad ends that feature being enabled. What operating system feature is disabled in either of the examples you gave?
Depends. The submitter claims to have tried to raise the issue and been shot down. Neither of us is in a position to distinguish between things like... Was the response really a hostile stone-walling as submitter seems to have perceived it, or just a sincere "we think you're mistaken"? How did submitter present the issue? What options were presented - or was only the problem presented? What evidence of the problem was presented? Frankly, how tactfully was the issue raised?
GP's advice is valid if submitter made a solid attempt to raise the issue and was shot down. GP is making assumptions... but then you are also making (the opposite) assumptions. Yes, you have to be willing to face a challenge in the workplace, but you also have to know when the powers in a company have committed to a decision you don't want to be part of.
No more than with any other cell provider, phone company, or utility company I've dealt with.
If you want to switch companies every time there's a glitch, go right ahead. Kid yourself that you're "voting with your wallet", even; but for every You leaving Company X and going to Company Y, there's another You leaving Company Y and yet another coming to Company X.
I have a short list of companies I won't deal with, because my issues with them went beyond "somebody made a mistake handling my bill one month". For all that people bitch about cell providers' customer relations, no cell company has ever made that list.
Set your expectations where you like, I suppose. However, you've essentially said:
1) A company should never make a mistake. (And, you're confident that you'll never make an error and think it was the comapny who made a mistake.)
2) Every CSR in a call center should be highly skilled in customer service, even though it's typically a low-rent job.
3) No CSR should ever have an off day or mis-handle a call.
If those are your criteria, then the only thing deciding who you'll do business with is blind luck. I assume you're happy with your current cell provider, but if so it's because you haven't happened to have an issue yet.
The headline and TFS both state that the code is only available to citizens for a $200 license. This is not true. RTFA.
This is a case of a company trying to weasle a buck and a city government not thinking through the options that might best serve a citizen. There was a fair amount of stupidity involved in the manner of refusing the FOI request, but that's about it.
The law is available for anyone to review - just not to take home their own copy without considerable expense. It will be available online for free in the near future, and where this guy ran into trouble is he specifically asked for a more convenient form of the information than the city is presently in a position to provide without more creativity than they exercise by defualt.
Bottom line - the city officials should get better educated, and it sounds like they're doing just that as they consider options to fill this request; in other words, business as usual, nothing to see here.
Submitter apparently is counting on/. readers to not follow links but merely form opniions from TFS. This is presented as though it were a list of blogs bashing the new law from all angles... but in reality:
- The first link is to an old/. entry. TFS from that entry has an update acknowledging that the summary write-up is wrong and encouraging readers to RTFA, but its article link is broken.
- The 2nd link is to a blog hostile to the law. Its writing style clearly shows bias. It is light on facts or citations to authoritative references, and heavy on assumptions about how to interpret the law.
- The 3rd link is to another blog disagreeing with the interpretation from the blog in the 2nd link, and saying that the law doesn't really look that bad....and at that point I gave up. This information just isn't important enough to me personally to justify continuing to navigate a dishonest compilation.
Here's an idea for future attempts: how about a link to the damned law?
"Binding on future decisions" conflicts with "it may be decided differently".
"Picking out individual phrases and juxtaposing them" conflicts with "reading and understanding what was said".
But I suppose the more direct answer is - no, generally there is no conflict between the idea that the decision process is bound by prior rulings, and the idea that the outcome may differ. In the special case where all substantial facts are the same as the prior case, there would be a confilct - but in that case the outcomes should be the same, that's the whole point.
"I think that any law that's "open to a degree of interpretation" is a badly written law, and can be - no, IS abused."
Well, interpretation of the law is the entire purpose of the judicial branch. I suppose if you could write laws that don't require interpretation you could do away with an entire branch of government; but you'll never assemble a legislature with the precision to write laws like computer code. I'm not so sure it's a desirable goal, anyway.
"Like that stupid example that always gets shoved into my face here on slashdot about corporations being OBLIGED to maximize profit because of some ruling in shareholders vs. Doge or Ford or something in 1930-odd. Usually this is thrown back at me when I point out a corporation acting irresponsibly in manufacturing or selling a product, this is justified because corporations HAVE to make as much money as possible - because of case law"
I disagree with attributing that to case law. The responsibility of corporations to shareholders existed before any particular court case. The court case is just the example that draws attention to that particular bit of regulation.
An attourney I know who is familiar with corporate law has told me that in fact the status of shareholder lawsuits has changed considerably since that ruling, by the way. I do take this information with a grain of salt as I consider her position biased by the jobs she's held, but according to her it's actually much harder to win a lawsuit on those grounds today than it was then.
Also, don't forget that people (especially around here) love to over-state claims as absolute to bolster their claims. Corporate responsibility to shareholder wallets has always had limits. (A company would not be compelled to break the law, defy regulatory authority, or act against its own corporate bylaws, for example.)
In short: Just because people on/. use it as an example, doesn't make it true.
"However any number of people WILL get upset by anything you can possibly say "
I'd be the first to say that the reaction to the Drew case was inane, but I hardly think the messages she allegedly sent can be said to fall under the "people get upset at anything" heading.
Anyway, if you can point to a law against "being rude", I'd honestly be interested in seeing it.
Can't speak for GP, but I am (and for many years have been) a Sprint PCS customer.
Yes, they have some really poor customer service reps. HOWEVER, every time I've had a legitimate billing dispute, and once even when it was a grey area where I'd made an error that was my fault, they ended up giving me a refund.
Guess what? That's the nature of cell phone call centers. The difference between "good" and "bad" in terms of call center staffing, is in a good call center only some of the CSR's lack both a working knowledge of the company's policies and a basic customer service skillset.
Sometimes you have to call back. Sometimes you have to escalate to a manager. Sometimes you have to do both. In all cases it helps to not start out by being a jerk to the CSR who almost certainly isn't personally responsible for whatever situation you're calling about.
The only people I've heard claim that the companies bully them on billing issues to the extent of stealing their money, are people who don't do their part to bring the issue to a smooth resolution.
Well, there's two problems with what you're saying:
First, that's not how case law works. Only decisions from certain (higher) levels of court are binding on future decisions (and if the legislature sees case law heading in the wrong direction they can head it off by changing the underlying law).
Second, the system was not designed to have every individual case decided independently. Aside from being a waste of time, that would lead to a less just system in which two people have identical circumstances but different outcomes. If there is case law covering a matter and a new case comes along with differing circumstances, then it may be decided differently - but the lawyers have to show a substantial reason why the eariler ruling doesn't apply instead of just playing on the fact that maybe they have a more sympathetic jury or a more likable client.
Yet another zealot can't oppose bad behavior without exageration. I have to wonder if the moron who submitted this understands the term "human rights violation". Suffice it to say the Geneva Convention's prohibition on collective punishment was not written out of concern that you might not have the internet connection you want.
It's not that you shouldn't want the **AA's abuses to stop. It's that you shoudln't be trivializing real crimes against humanity by comparing them to weak-ass shit like this.
Everyone seems to be jumping on the 64kbps number and assuming it refers to some piece of the system they're familiar with. Yet what TFA describes doesn't sound like the same thing to me. I'd be unsurprised to find that the 64kbps number looks familiar because they picked it to conform to what other pieces of the system are doing.
In any case, they did not find flaws in some specific box they tested against. If you RTFA, you'll fnid that they specifically are addressing flaws they've inferred from the spec, because they specifically could not get equipment to test against.
And that's half my point. There is no real information in this research; IMO it looks like just a research group with a history of trying to poke wiretap tech in the eye making speculative claims about weaknesses they can't verify in any real-world context.
So... when you try to load slashdot, the requests that fetch the content don't get rolling until the request that fetches the ad finishes... and SPDY allows all of the requests to be processed concurrently so the content doesn't have to wait for the ad...
First, this apparently applies to VoIP systems and cell phones, not analog land lines.
Second, it is not a DDoS attack, as the headline claims. It is a DoS attack, though. That extra D means "distributed" and refers to situations where you bring many computers (say, a botnet for example) to the party so that your cumulative traffic-generation ability exceeds your target's capacity. Those techniques are not in play here. I guess Internet-based distributed attacks have become so common that people don't bother knowing what the acronyms really mean anymore.
The channel you're trying to flood is a 64kbps data link between the phone company's switch and the law enforcement equipment. That is to say, the spec calls for 64kbps - so you don't really know if they have more than that in implementation. The idea is that if you program your system to rapidly make useless connections (such as text messages to random numbers) then you can flood this link and the equipment will lose track of the metadata describing an important message you send along during the flood. "Rapid" is on the order of 40 text messages per second; maybe you can program your equipment to do that.
They have not been able to test this attack in practice, and they're making assumptions - some of which I doubt - about what the result would be. Seems like a lot of trouble to go to for the chance that maybe there'll be a random probability that the call you care about doesn't get logged - and even then you won't know after the fact whether it worked. Anyone who takes communications security seriously enough to apply that much effort, will apply it to doing something more certain to work.
"I'm saying is there's nothing in the text of the claim that requires the authentication request to be handled by the operating system."
If the OS (or to be more precise, since the invention may be deployed as part of the OS, any component of the OS outside of the invention) has to intervene, that also is not the invention. The invention itself has to respond to the authorization failure. Not the application that tried to do something it wasn't allowed to do. Not the OS. The invention.
"I'm saying the claim is ambiguous enough that the patent might cover the invocation of gksudo by an application"
I understand what you are saying. You are incorrect.
If I patent an invention where pulling into a driveway causes the garage door to open, I cannot then claim you're infringing if you're paying a guy to sit next to your garage door and open it when you pull into the driveway. The patent spells out what the invention does - not what happens in proximity to the invention - and it says quite clearly that the invention responds to an authorization failure. A device that relies on something outside of itself to do something spelled out in the patent claims, isn't the covered invention.
"just as it would cover an invocation by the operating system"
What you're not getting is, it wouldn't cover an "invocation" by the operating system. If the code has to be invoked by any outside component responding to the authorization failure - then the code itself is not responding to the authorization failure and is not the invention.
"I shall take your reply as "
If you want to interpret your failure to understand patent language as me being evasive, so be it. Try your argument in court, and you'll find out the hard way that I'm right.
The correct question is: where in the claims does it say that it does cover a system in which an application, having received an "authorization denied" exception, and knowing that the invention is present, then requests that the invention do X, Y, and Z? The answer is, the claims don't say that - therefore such a system isn't covered.
See, the claims don't enumerate the thigns that aren't the invention, so asking me to point out where it says that such-and-such isn't the invention is a bit absurd.
The claim language is perfectly clear on this: the exception itself is the trigger for the invention to act. The app doesn't have to do anything, or even know that anything can be done.
Copyright was designed to protect expressive works. Computer code is not typically expressive, but rather is typically functional. For 99.99% of software, copyright protection is a horrible retrofit that I can only believe came about because nobody really thought it through.
I see nothing that distinguishes software designs from any other design WRT the intent of patent. I hear lots of arguments that show how absurd a software patent can be - apparently based on the idea that if there's any software you can patent, then that must mean that any bit of software could be patented.
There are plenty of physical "inventions" that should not be patentable, and the copyright law tries to categorize the reasons why a given invention would fall in this category. The same categories work equally well with software patents, with the caveat that someone lacking software skill would have a hard time evaluating them. (But guess what - someone without EE training would have a hard time applying them to a circuit board.) All of the nightmare scenarios I hear about "...someone could patent X if software patents are allowed" would actually be prevented just by applying such standards as novelty and usefullness.
Note I said "work equally well", not 'work perfectly'. Even in the world of inventions whose embodiments are tangible machines, the criteria for patentability are imperfect. It's really a tough problem, and if you find that reason enough to oppose all patents then I can understand that position (though I wouldn't agree). I find it harder to understand singling out of software patents on those grounds.
The only distinction I think is "real" around software patents is - while physical patents tend to restrain you from doing things you'd have a hard time doing anyway, a software patent may often be the one thing keeping you from making/selling/using something. Just another instance where the digital world has made something so easy, that people just want to assume it should be legal and unrestrained.
The part that says that the instructions cause X, Y, and Z to happen in response to an authorization failure, along with the lack of any part that says the instruction cause X, Y, and Z to happen in response to being specifically asked to do so by the user and/or another program.
So now you expect MS to identify and categorize any mod you might happen to have made, to tell whether you specifically are cheating?
OTOH, MS is defining the boundaries of a service they're providing; so even if cheating could never be an issue and their only purpose were to not extend the service to people who circumvent their DRM, I'd still figure them to be within their rights.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a passable explanation for why the majority of code is bug-infested crap. The coders who write quality code aren't as prolific as the ones who don't care as long as they can sucker the QA department into beleiving the code "works".
"You never heard of Hilary Rodham Clinton?"
Rodham is her maiden name. Her middle name, as near as I can tell, is Diane.
"That's how she wanted to be referred to when Bill Clinton took presidential office."
Good point; the reason people refer to her using her maiden name is because she expressed that preference. How does that relate to the question of why someone would conspicuously insert Obama's middle name?
"You still see it in articles referring to her today."
Yet not in the comment that GP was questioning.
"the non-US Press . . . at least they told the truth about the rush to war in Iraq"
You can slander the US Press all you like, but they also told the truth about the rush to war in Iraq.
In fact, there were US journalists presenting both points of view, exactly as you'd expect in a free press. Was the same true in the French media, or was it all one-sided America-bashing? Unlike you, I won't pretend to know what the media was doing in a country where I don't live.
But the really surprising thing is, based on the number of responses you drew with this comment, the deflection of attention to the US press seems to have been pretty effective. The topic wasn't whether French media were more or less free than US press, but rather whether they were the embodiment of free expression.
"a religious symbol isn't speech"
What makes you think that? Keep in mind that "freedom of speech" is just a label, and in practice many forms of expression are protected as part of the right to free speech - not just verbal utterances. For example, books, leaflets, and other written materials, while not literally "speech", are nonetheless protected by freedom of speech.
A more accurate, but for some reason less-used, description is "freedom of expression".
"Second, religion is a private thing of anyone. No reason to demonstratively exibit it to everyone"
So you get to decide for me what I should keep private? You get to decide for me whether there's a reason for a particular act of expression? Sounds like you don't like freedom of speech much at all, really.
"And third, a truly secular country doesn't endorce a particular religion"
So, I should only be allowed to express those views that my country endorses? If the country doesn't endorse a view, then I can be forbidden to express it?
"'but I can't think of a time when a corporation patented something bad soley as a way of preventing someone from using it'
I think you'll find that a cursory look at Pharmaceutical patents will reveal a large number of cures that no big player in medical marketplace would ever want to see in the wild, let alone see a vast population of people in need have access to at affordable prices"
The drug companies are not trying to prevent the poor from using these treatments. They are, in MSF's views, not doing as much as they could to provide access to them. There's a huge difference. What MSF wants is for them to be produced (and priced) as generics prior to patent expiration. You can argue the merits of that idea, but in no way does it point to the level of immorality and conspiracy that you've implied by presenting this as a response to GP.
Part of MSF's job is to encourage others to make philanthropic gestures. They're asking pharma companies to donate resources to a humanitarian cause; that's fine. But, painting it as a moral imperitive that the company do so is pushing it a bit. If you feel strongly that poor populations should have more access to these drugs, you could spend some of your time and money helping raise funds to buy them and send them there. But it's always easier to tell someone else to donate what's theirs, than to donate what's yours, isn't it?
"Look also at Microsoft research: they come up with some extraordinary technologies/solutions that would no doubt undermine the broader, stable market for their existing inferior products if available on a desktop near you."
Citation needed.
You know what, screw that - what you're saying doesn't make sense. If I develop a technology that I want to suppress, the last thing I'm going to do is patent it, thereby ensuring that in 17 years it will be on the market in my competitors' hands.
"I believe that all these nonsense Apple patents relating to advertising may reveal that Apple may soon ship an ad-encumbered version of it's OS for Intel hardware more generic than that already in the Apple line."
Maybe. Of course that's exactly the opposite of what GP said he's never seen happen, so I'm not sure what your point is....
Actually that's completely incorrect. Why is it that every time /. sees a patent, we get a dozen posters who can't be bothered to read the patent claims yet talk like they know what the patent covers?
Yes, the patent has something to do with advertising and encouraging users to watch it. No, that doesn't mean that everything that's ever been done to encourage people to watch an ad would be covered or, equivalently, can stand as prior art.
Every independent claim in the patent talks about a featuer in an operating system being disabled, then an ad being displayed, then when teh ad ends that feature being enabled. What operating system feature is disabled in either of the examples you gave?
I bet you're wondering why your prisoners always escape, eh?
Depends. The submitter claims to have tried to raise the issue and been shot down. Neither of us is in a position to distinguish between things like... Was the response really a hostile stone-walling as submitter seems to have perceived it, or just a sincere "we think you're mistaken"? How did submitter present the issue? What options were presented - or was only the problem presented? What evidence of the problem was presented? Frankly, how tactfully was the issue raised?
GP's advice is valid if submitter made a solid attempt to raise the issue and was shot down. GP is making assumptions... but then you are also making (the opposite) assumptions. Yes, you have to be willing to face a challenge in the workplace, but you also have to know when the powers in a company have committed to a decision you don't want to be part of.
"How many billing issues have you had with them"
No more than with any other cell provider, phone company, or utility company I've dealt with.
If you want to switch companies every time there's a glitch, go right ahead. Kid yourself that you're "voting with your wallet", even; but for every You leaving Company X and going to Company Y, there's another You leaving Company Y and yet another coming to Company X.
I have a short list of companies I won't deal with, because my issues with them went beyond "somebody made a mistake handling my bill one month". For all that people bitch about cell providers' customer relations, no cell company has ever made that list.
Set your expectations where you like, I suppose. However, you've essentially said:
1) A company should never make a mistake. (And, you're confident that you'll never make an error and think it was the comapny who made a mistake.)
2) Every CSR in a call center should be highly skilled in customer service, even though it's typically a low-rent job.
3) No CSR should ever have an off day or mis-handle a call.
If those are your criteria, then the only thing deciding who you'll do business with is blind luck. I assume you're happy with your current cell provider, but if so it's because you haven't happened to have an issue yet.
The headline and TFS both state that the code is only available to citizens for a $200 license. This is not true. RTFA.
This is a case of a company trying to weasle a buck and a city government not thinking through the options that might best serve a citizen. There was a fair amount of stupidity involved in the manner of refusing the FOI request, but that's about it.
The law is available for anyone to review - just not to take home their own copy without considerable expense. It will be available online for free in the near future, and where this guy ran into trouble is he specifically asked for a more convenient form of the information than the city is presently in a position to provide without more creativity than they exercise by defualt.
Bottom line - the city officials should get better educated, and it sounds like they're doing just that as they consider options to fill this request; in other words, business as usual, nothing to see here.
Submitter apparently is counting on /. readers to not follow links but merely form opniions from TFS. This is presented as though it were a list of blogs bashing the new law from all angles... but in reality:
- The first link is to an old /. entry. TFS from that entry has an update acknowledging that the summary write-up is wrong and encouraging readers to RTFA, but its article link is broken.
- The 2nd link is to a blog hostile to the law. Its writing style clearly shows bias. It is light on facts or citations to authoritative references, and heavy on assumptions about how to interpret the law.
- The 3rd link is to another blog disagreeing with the interpretation from the blog in the 2nd link, and saying that the law doesn't really look that bad. ...and at that point I gave up. This information just isn't important enough to me personally to justify continuing to navigate a dishonest compilation.
Here's an idea for future attempts: how about a link to the damned law?
"Binding on future decisions" conflicts with "it may be decided differently".
"Picking out individual phrases and juxtaposing them" conflicts with "reading and understanding what was said".
But I suppose the more direct answer is - no, generally there is no conflict between the idea that the decision process is bound by prior rulings, and the idea that the outcome may differ. In the special case where all substantial facts are the same as the prior case, there would be a confilct - but in that case the outcomes should be the same, that's the whole point.
"I think that any law that's "open to a degree of interpretation" is a badly written law, and can be - no, IS abused."
Well, interpretation of the law is the entire purpose of the judicial branch. I suppose if you could write laws that don't require interpretation you could do away with an entire branch of government; but you'll never assemble a legislature with the precision to write laws like computer code. I'm not so sure it's a desirable goal, anyway.
"Like that stupid example that always gets shoved into my face here on slashdot about corporations being OBLIGED to maximize profit because of some ruling in shareholders vs. Doge or Ford or something in 1930-odd. Usually this is thrown back at me when I point out a corporation acting irresponsibly in manufacturing or selling a product, this is justified because corporations HAVE to make as much money as possible - because of case law"
I disagree with attributing that to case law. The responsibility of corporations to shareholders existed before any particular court case. The court case is just the example that draws attention to that particular bit of regulation.
An attourney I know who is familiar with corporate law has told me that in fact the status of shareholder lawsuits has changed considerably since that ruling, by the way. I do take this information with a grain of salt as I consider her position biased by the jobs she's held, but according to her it's actually much harder to win a lawsuit on those grounds today than it was then.
Also, don't forget that people (especially around here) love to over-state claims as absolute to bolster their claims. Corporate responsibility to shareholder wallets has always had limits. (A company would not be compelled to break the law, defy regulatory authority, or act against its own corporate bylaws, for example.)
In short: Just because people on /. use it as an example, doesn't make it true.
"However any number of people WILL get upset by anything you can possibly say "
I'd be the first to say that the reaction to the Drew case was inane, but I hardly think the messages she allegedly sent can be said to fall under the "people get upset at anything" heading.
Anyway, if you can point to a law against "being rude", I'd honestly be interested in seeing it.
Can't speak for GP, but I am (and for many years have been) a Sprint PCS customer.
Yes, they have some really poor customer service reps. HOWEVER, every time I've had a legitimate billing dispute, and once even when it was a grey area where I'd made an error that was my fault, they ended up giving me a refund.
Guess what? That's the nature of cell phone call centers. The difference between "good" and "bad" in terms of call center staffing, is in a good call center only some of the CSR's lack both a working knowledge of the company's policies and a basic customer service skillset.
Sometimes you have to call back. Sometimes you have to escalate to a manager. Sometimes you have to do both. In all cases it helps to not start out by being a jerk to the CSR who almost certainly isn't personally responsible for whatever situation you're calling about.
The only people I've heard claim that the companies bully them on billing issues to the extent of stealing their money, are people who don't do their part to bring the issue to a smooth resolution.
Well, there's two problems with what you're saying:
First, that's not how case law works. Only decisions from certain (higher) levels of court are binding on future decisions (and if the legislature sees case law heading in the wrong direction they can head it off by changing the underlying law).
Second, the system was not designed to have every individual case decided independently. Aside from being a waste of time, that would lead to a less just system in which two people have identical circumstances but different outcomes. If there is case law covering a matter and a new case comes along with differing circumstances, then it may be decided differently - but the lawyers have to show a substantial reason why the eariler ruling doesn't apply instead of just playing on the fact that maybe they have a more sympathetic jury or a more likable client.
Yet another zealot can't oppose bad behavior without exageration. I have to wonder if the moron who submitted this understands the term "human rights violation". Suffice it to say the Geneva Convention's prohibition on collective punishment was not written out of concern that you might not have the internet connection you want.
It's not that you shouldn't want the **AA's abuses to stop. It's that you shoudln't be trivializing real crimes against humanity by comparing them to weak-ass shit like this.
That is all.
Everyone seems to be jumping on the 64kbps number and assuming it refers to some piece of the system they're familiar with. Yet what TFA describes doesn't sound like the same thing to me. I'd be unsurprised to find that the 64kbps number looks familiar because they picked it to conform to what other pieces of the system are doing.
In any case, they did not find flaws in some specific box they tested against. If you RTFA, you'll fnid that they specifically are addressing flaws they've inferred from the spec, because they specifically could not get equipment to test against.
And that's half my point. There is no real information in this research; IMO it looks like just a research group with a history of trying to poke wiretap tech in the eye making speculative claims about weaknesses they can't verify in any real-world context.
All well and good, except that the attack you are describing is not what the article describes the researchers doing.
I guess that's what happens when you respond to someone who read TFA with an assessment based on "the way the summary presented it".
So... when you try to load slashdot, the requests that fetch the content don't get rolling until the request that fetches the ad finishes... and SPDY allows all of the requests to be processed concurrently so the content doesn't have to wait for the ad...
How is that solving the wrong problem again?
...for those who didn't RTFA:
First, this apparently applies to VoIP systems and cell phones, not analog land lines.
Second, it is not a DDoS attack, as the headline claims. It is a DoS attack, though. That extra D means "distributed" and refers to situations where you bring many computers (say, a botnet for example) to the party so that your cumulative traffic-generation ability exceeds your target's capacity. Those techniques are not in play here. I guess Internet-based distributed attacks have become so common that people don't bother knowing what the acronyms really mean anymore.
The channel you're trying to flood is a 64kbps data link between the phone company's switch and the law enforcement equipment. That is to say, the spec calls for 64kbps - so you don't really know if they have more than that in implementation. The idea is that if you program your system to rapidly make useless connections (such as text messages to random numbers) then you can flood this link and the equipment will lose track of the metadata describing an important message you send along during the flood. "Rapid" is on the order of 40 text messages per second; maybe you can program your equipment to do that.
They have not been able to test this attack in practice, and they're making assumptions - some of which I doubt - about what the result would be. Seems like a lot of trouble to go to for the chance that maybe there'll be a random probability that the call you care about doesn't get logged - and even then you won't know after the fact whether it worked. Anyone who takes communications security seriously enough to apply that much effort, will apply it to doing something more certain to work.
"I'm saying is there's nothing in the text of the claim that requires the authentication request to be handled by the operating system."
If the OS (or to be more precise, since the invention may be deployed as part of the OS, any component of the OS outside of the invention) has to intervene, that also is not the invention. The invention itself has to respond to the authorization failure. Not the application that tried to do something it wasn't allowed to do. Not the OS. The invention.
"I'm saying the claim is ambiguous enough that the patent might cover the invocation of gksudo by an application"
I understand what you are saying. You are incorrect.
If I patent an invention where pulling into a driveway causes the garage door to open, I cannot then claim you're infringing if you're paying a guy to sit next to your garage door and open it when you pull into the driveway. The patent spells out what the invention does - not what happens in proximity to the invention - and it says quite clearly that the invention responds to an authorization failure. A device that relies on something outside of itself to do something spelled out in the patent claims, isn't the covered invention.
"just as it would cover an invocation by the operating system"
What you're not getting is, it wouldn't cover an "invocation" by the operating system. If the code has to be invoked by any outside component responding to the authorization failure - then the code itself is not responding to the authorization failure and is not the invention.
"I shall take your reply as "
If you want to interpret your failure to understand patent language as me being evasive, so be it. Try your argument in court, and you'll find out the hard way that I'm right.
I'm afraid you have the question backwards.
The correct question is: where in the claims does it say that it does cover a system in which an application, having received an "authorization denied" exception, and knowing that the invention is present, then requests that the invention do X, Y, and Z? The answer is, the claims don't say that - therefore such a system isn't covered.
See, the claims don't enumerate the thigns that aren't the invention, so asking me to point out where it says that such-and-such isn't the invention is a bit absurd.
The claim language is perfectly clear on this: the exception itself is the trigger for the invention to act. The app doesn't have to do anything, or even know that anything can be done.
Copyright was designed to protect expressive works. Computer code is not typically expressive, but rather is typically functional. For 99.99% of software, copyright protection is a horrible retrofit that I can only believe came about because nobody really thought it through.
I see nothing that distinguishes software designs from any other design WRT the intent of patent. I hear lots of arguments that show how absurd a software patent can be - apparently based on the idea that if there's any software you can patent, then that must mean that any bit of software could be patented.
There are plenty of physical "inventions" that should not be patentable, and the copyright law tries to categorize the reasons why a given invention would fall in this category. The same categories work equally well with software patents, with the caveat that someone lacking software skill would have a hard time evaluating them. (But guess what - someone without EE training would have a hard time applying them to a circuit board.) All of the nightmare scenarios I hear about "...someone could patent X if software patents are allowed" would actually be prevented just by applying such standards as novelty and usefullness.
Note I said "work equally well", not 'work perfectly'. Even in the world of inventions whose embodiments are tangible machines, the criteria for patentability are imperfect. It's really a tough problem, and if you find that reason enough to oppose all patents then I can understand that position (though I wouldn't agree). I find it harder to understand singling out of software patents on those grounds.
The only distinction I think is "real" around software patents is - while physical patents tend to restrain you from doing things you'd have a hard time doing anyway, a software patent may often be the one thing keeping you from making/selling/using something. Just another instance where the digital world has made something so easy, that people just want to assume it should be legal and unrestrained.
The part that says that the instructions cause X, Y, and Z to happen in response to an authorization failure, along with the lack of any part that says the instruction cause X, Y, and Z to happen in response to being specifically asked to do so by the user and/or another program.
So now you expect MS to identify and categorize any mod you might happen to have made, to tell whether you specifically are cheating?
OTOH, MS is defining the boundaries of a service they're providing; so even if cheating could never be an issue and their only purpose were to not extend the service to people who circumvent their DRM, I'd still figure them to be within their rights.