IANAL - BUT At least, this deserves a thorough test in court. If the courts find that DMCA violates the First Amendment, it's toast (or at least the provisions that violate it are).
If Slashdot decides to fight this on these grounds, I doubt they'll have trouble with legal fees. The ACLU would probably take the case pro bono.
I used to be a C++ programmer, and a good one, I think. I always thought the claims that java was a simpler language were nonsense. I wasn't afraid of no steenking pointers, I knew how to delete my objects, I'd read and understood the Scott Meyers books. I'd used and loved working with the STL.
Then I got a job working in java. What I found, basically, was that I didn't miss not having to delete pointers and such one bit. Sure, I'm not writing the world's fastest code in java, but it's plenty fast enough for what we need to do with it. There's even an STL-like group of classes for java. (Check out JGL).
I have written, in the past year, more code that has actually been reused (never mind reusable) in one year of java progamming than in five years of C++ programming. By removing the need for concentrating all that stuff, you instead get to concentrate more on the problem domain.
Slashdot Mirror
Correctomundo!
IANAL - BUT
At least, this deserves a thorough test in court. If the courts find that DMCA violates the First Amendment, it's toast (or at least the provisions that violate it are).
If Slashdot decides to fight this on these grounds, I doubt they'll have trouble with legal fees. The ACLU would probably take the case pro bono.
I used to be a C++ programmer, and a good one, I think. I always thought the claims that java was a simpler language were nonsense. I wasn't afraid of no steenking pointers, I knew how to delete my objects, I'd read and understood the Scott Meyers books. I'd used and loved working with the STL.
Then I got a job working in java. What I found, basically, was that I didn't miss not having to delete pointers and such one bit. Sure, I'm not writing the world's fastest code in java, but it's plenty fast enough for what we need to do with it. There's even an STL-like group of classes for java. (Check out JGL).
I have written, in the past year, more code that has actually been reused (never mind reusable) in one year of java progamming than in five years of C++ programming. By removing the need for concentrating all that stuff, you instead get to concentrate more on the problem domain.
Reasonably good story from Ms. Foley, one of the better ZDNet writers, but ...
How can I install the alternative OS BEFORE turning the machine on????