Microsoft's problem is not with open source software. They've said as much. Their problem is with open source software that they can't appropriate at will. They love the BSD license. It allows them to freeload off of others' work. The GPL on the other hand is clearly the enemy of free people everywhere and is likely to cause the End of the World as We Know It.
If different people run different operating systems, or even different versions of a similar or same operating system, it means that the anarchic 14 year olds wanting to break into said computers will have to work harder...because they will need to write versions of a given virus for a greater number of operating systems than just one.
Of course, this has been known to biologists for a very long time. Just ask the Habsburgs.
Which is a reasonable qualification if you're about to tell somebody that there is ONE good thing about Toyota, but you don't want them to think you're some kind of fan boy.
By the way, is it true that the most deadly nuclear weapons are actually produced by Russia?
Russia built and tested the 100MT beast "Tsar Bomba." Some people believe that there was also a 150 MT detonation, but nobody can verify it. The problem with Tsar Bomba was that it was so friggin' huge, it couldn't be weaponized. They had to cut out the belly of the bomber that carried it, and it didn't have enough fuel to get anywhere. Basically, the only "enemy" territory they might maybe have gotten it to was in non-Soviet eastern parts of Europe, but it still would have been close enough to cause damage in the western parts of the Soviet Union. So basically it was just a pissing match. We probably had the technology to build a beast like that, but there was no reason to do it. We were too busy hatching plans to detonate a nuke on the moon.
The biggest detonation by the U.S. and her cronies was the 15 MT Castle Bravo shot, which was actually an accident. It was only supposed to be about a quarter of that. Because it was bigger than it was supposed to be, it created a fallout disaster, including dosing up some Japanese fishermen on a vessel ironically named "Fifth Lucky Dragon" (it appears to have been fatal to one of the fishermen). Marshallese islanders also got heavy doses.
Isn't your.sig a little unfair to Tom Cruise? I mean honestly, one of those things isn't exactly his fault. Lots of current research shows that blithering idiocy is a hereditary characteristic.
Why is it failing? Because some companies had to wait a few years (a "limited time") before they could exploit somebody else's hard work? Remember that the word "patent" means "obvious or apparent." Without the patent, this technology would be a Trade Secret that would still be locked in a vault like a decades-old Walt Disney film. Nobody would have access to it. The purpose of patents is to encourage inventors to open up their inventions. What this really sounds like is somebody invented something, showed everybody what they invented, had time to do what he could with it, and now that his time is up, everybody else gets their shot. If anything, this is the poster boy case for keeping patent law.
All the people posting anti-IP slashbot rants about how this "proves" the failure of patent law need to pool their money and buy a dictionary or something.
While I would hate to be seen as standing up for the Kelo decision, it does not allow the government to take your land without "reparations." Governments are not supposed to be able to take your land at all , with or without "reparations," except for some very narrow "Public Uses" (roads, bridges, schools). What the Kelo decision did was cut the last tiny, little thread that the "Public Use" clause was hanging by and say that the city could take your land whenever they want it and give it to whomever they please. They still have to give you "just compensation" (althouth that basically translates into "whatever the city decides your property is worth before they take it").
I hate the Kelo decision as much as anybody (in fact, I haven't run into a single person who likes it), but lets not make it into a beast it's not.
Mt. Fuji is trivial. I move the whole friggin' Universe every time I get up to get a drink of water. I guess Microsoft has never heard of inertial reference frames.
Hold on there, cowboy. If you're going to post idiotic rants, at least be sure to toss in an inane "W is dumb-leyou" rant and blame the MPAA somehow. Sure, maybe you got lucky this time, but not every moronic brain fart gets "+5, Insightful" without those two essential elements.
Seriously, without the huge surplus lawyer-mountain in the US, crazy shit like this wouldnt be an option.
In an open court system, any moron can file a suit against anybody for anything. The story did not say that the Russian (did we miss that tiny detail in our rush to post "Insightful" word vomit about how lawyers are teh 5uX0r?) court had granted the lady summary judgment or anything. It just said that she filed it. If you really want to see how easy it is, go down to your local court house and file an action against the ABA and its Russian equivalent, and in your "Prayer for Relief," ask the judge to shoot all of the lawyers at a Comet. If you pay the fee, you are free to file your stupid, frivolous lawsuit (and maybe it will even make Slashdot). It will be dismissed and...
I think US judges should be given encouragement to laugh in the faces of morons who bring court cases like this, and to charge them costs big time to put them off pulling such pathetic stunts.
...there's a good chance you will be fined under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or a state equivalent (depending on where you file). Speaking of pathetic, could we call it slightly pathetic that you are, in response to a Russian lawsuit, angrily crying for U.S. judges to have a power that they already have and exercise? Honestly, can people not even be bothered to read the one-paragraph summary anymore?
They release it to the public for free (and Free) and keep track of how many copies are in circulation. Depending on how popular it is, they are then paid $5,00,000,000, or what ever, by a central organisation. The consumers have to pay this organisation a set amount each year to cover their costs, but are then free to do whatever they want with the movie/music/software.
And really, why not? The Kelo v. New London decision last week set up a Socialist regime for Real Property ownership. We may as well go ahead and do the same with Intellectual Property. After all, we all saw the phenomenal success of Socialism throughout the 20th Century. We really should scrap this "Free Market" crap and just let the "People" own everything collectively. I mean honestly, what's the alternative? Having sane copyright laws and forcing the poor Media Megaindustries to come up with innovative ways to adjust to changing technology? As if that would ever work.
the use of 'goto' leads to "swiss-cheesing" of the brain, the inability to think logically, and a plethora of other problems, leading eventually to brain-rot and inability to write code in anything but Perl.
Be sure that the sales contract contains indemnification language against any possible injuries. There may be some potential hazards in a boating excursion on a lake full of methane.
No, it's not. My question (and the question the court was to decide) was whether Grokster specifically falls within the Betamax decision. The fact that P2P in general has non-infringing uses is part of that decision, but is hardly dispositive all by its lonesome (otherwise, the Court's decision would have been different). The court focused on how the software is advertised and promoted to determine how substantial the non-infringing uses were in this case. That means that if you create P2P software (let's hypothetically call it "BitTorrent") that is used largely for legal file transfers, and you don't tout its illegal capabilities to promote your business model of selling advertising, you should be okay under this ruling. That's as far as they had to go to dispose of this case. Sure, they could have mixed in some dicta if they wanted to, but to what end? Was there some pressing social policy that this decision did not adequately address as written?
That's certainly the current trend (see also Bush v. Gore). But it's not a historical constant.
It has always been a court's job (ANY court) to decide the case before it. Over time, the synthesis of those decisions becomes a body of common law, but that doesn't mean that a court is supposed to write an entire Restatement of File Sharing just because it sees a Grokster case. As for Bush v. Gore, the Court in that case did weasel out because it explicitly limited its ruling. That's a red flag for result-based decisions, and I found it disgusting because I agreed with the decision that they refused to make law. As it is, if a Democrat wins an election under similar circumstances, he can't rely on the Bush decision, which is just stupid. The court did not place any such limit on the Grokster decision. They issued a rule in this case. The fact that it is not as broad as you'd like does not make it deficient. Honestly, for all the complaint I've heard about this ruling, I haven't heard a proposed rule that makes a lot more sense. I don't particularly side with Grokster here. They made a business model out of copyright infringement. I'd say the Court did a good job of saying that they won't put up with that without destroying P2P.
Only cases presenting rules of this scope - with the potential for real precedent - should receive Supreme Court certiorari.
To be quite precise, Art. III, Section 2 of the Constitution and the Erie doctrine tell the Court what cases it can hear. Within those bounds, their decision to grant certiorari can be as arbitrary as they please. Normally, they will hear cases that decide important legal questions because they feel that's how their time will best be spent. But again, the fact that the legal question they addressed is not the one you wanted them to address does not make them remiss.
Can you imagine today's Court making so clear and bold a statement as in Mapp?
I seem to remember them saying very clearly last Thursday that municipalities have essentially unfettered discretion in condemning property under the Fifth Amendment. The ruling was stupid, but it was hardly equivocal.
It can't even clearly state whether the Ten Commandments belong in a courthouse, without resorting to wishy-washy "intent" language.
Nine justices. Nine points of view. They had to compromise. This was an issue that obviously sharply divided the court. The majorities were different in the two cases. As an alternative to compromising, they could delegate all decisions to Scalia. That would surely put an end to all this ambiguity.
Honestly, I don't know what all the uproar is over today. It seems pretty clear to me that Grokster was encouraging copyright infringement to get eyeballs on its advertisements. I would actually call today's decision a victory for P2P. Look at the court's language:
The question before the court was not "is a P2P company responsible for the copyright-infringing acts of its users." The question before the court was "Does Grokster get to benefit from the Betamax rule." It is not the court's job to decide some abstract, hypothetical dispute so that there are clear legal boundaries to every potential decision. The court's job was to decide the case before it, namely MGM v. Grokster (not All Media Content Providers v. Every Possible P2P Application in Existence). The court had to decide who wins between MGM and Grokster. If in the process, they state some fundamental legal doctrine with more broad applicability, hooray for whoever benefits from that decision. That doesn't mean they're remiss for not unnecessarily expanding the scope of this case. In fact, it's entirely possible in a hypothetical case of A v. B that 4 Justices say that A wins for reason X and 4 say A wins for reason Y, and one dissents and says B wins, so that the only legal rule that comes out of the decision is "A wins." A still wins, but it doesn't help anybody else, and that's okay.
Somebody mod parent up. That's the perfect analogy. If these guys were hosting your credit card numbers, would you then get a warm fuzzy about them hiding behind their Switzerland argument? What if Grokster was being used to share your server logs and the authors were advertising that use? Would you be all pissy about the S.Ct. making them liable? Let's get a reality check here today.
Shouldn't be a problem if they offer some obscure stuff you like. All the teenagers will be busy downloading Jessica Simpson from each other, and the main servers will be wide open for you.
That was exactly my thought when I first heard that forced pop culture catch phrase they were trying to push. Sure enough, just like you, I started hearing people say it and wanted to vomit. Their new hip-hop commercials have guaranteed that I will steer clear of the place. I don't care to socialize with the dread-locked-just-came-from-a-college-party-and-ha ve-the-MJ-munchies crowd they appear to be hoping to attract.
Funny, I don't see those words in Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution.
These are the relevant words I see:
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority
That means that the court's job is to enforce the Constitution, Laws and Treaties of the United States (in that order). They shouldn't be writing their own laws. Obviously, when a law conflicts with the Constitution, the law should be struck down in favor of the Constitution. What I was saying was that when the justices just don't like a law, but that law falls short of Unconstitutional, they are not free to re-write it to their whims. Common law can never trump statute, just like statute cannot trump the Constitution (yes, I'm aware that many judges just do what they want anyway, but that's another issue). The recognized rules of statutory interpretation require the justices to ascribe a Constitutional intent to the legislature if possible, which means that the courts will read the provision in its Constitutional light. It's not a matter of whether the law can somehow be construed or used in an Unconstitutional manner. It's a matter of whether there is any Constitutional way to construe the law. If there is, the Courts should ascribe that meaning to it and require that it be enforced that way. If there is no Constitutional way to construe the provision, only then should it be tossed out, but that can't happen until somebody in law enforcement tries to enforce it in an Unconstitutional manner. When that happens, the injured party should complain, and then the law should be struck down. Laws can't just be tossed because there is some theoretically Unconstitutional way to enforce them.
Since it's in many cases illegal to inform people that inquiries are being made about them under PATRIOT, aforementioned people can hardly go mounting judicial challenges, can they?
In this case, I think the harm is wholly theoretical. If the FBI is watching me in violation of my rights, but they never do anything about it, and I never find out about it, then I really can't show harm. It may not be right, but I wouldn't even have a tort claim against them. My contention is that if the government is really abusing power under the auspices of the Patriot Act, somebody will suffer actual, demonstrable harm by it and complain about it, at which point, the courts will rule against that provision if it is indeed Unconstitutional.
"correctly" these days tends to mean "in line with the intent of Congress"
Which, unfortunately, is their job. I couldn't agree with you more that the courts allow Congress to abuse the Commerce Clause to basically do whatever they want. Indeed, I think the courts have basically used the 10th Amendment to wipe the Commerce Clause's butt. But I wouldn't characterize that directly as a Patriot Act issue. That's an argument for more sane constitutional interpretation. All told, I tend to think the courts do a better job of upholding individual rights than states' rights. I would say that the Patriot Act is one of many poorly drafted laws that will have to be re-shaped and limited over time to get to the point that it achieves the positive results it intends without being oppressive. When I see that there is widespread, unfettered abuse of Patriot Act powers, then I'll join in the cries. But right now I think it's mostly theoretical, and I still have hope that sanity will prevail over time. And if that's true, the best way to get to the optimal result is meaningful dialog instead of the kind of panic we see on Slashdot sometimes.
To the extent that those drugs help reduce your frenzied paranoid delusional state of mind, apparently so.
Of course the Patriot Act is a good thing and only helps to stop terrorists.
If that's your opinion, you're entitled to it. I certainly said nothing of the sort. For perspective...
Slashdotland -- AAAAUUUGGGHHH! Patriot Act is teh SuX0r!!! They will use it to spy on you without a warrant while you surf pr0n and will then arrest you for having pictures of Brittney Spears on your computer!!! And they'll use it to restrict your fair use rights every time you log on to Bittorrent to use your fair use rights to fairly download the latest Avril Levign album!!! It's 3v17!!! It's totally unconstitutional. The 5th Amendment says so!!!
Real World -- The FBI doesn't care about your porn addiction. If you're illegally copying, distributing or receiving copyrigthed material, then you are breaking the law, so if you get caught, is it really that "unfair?" If the FBI catches you with a search performed without a warrant, be sure to tell your defense attorney to bring it up.
Slashdotland -- d00d! The Patriot Act has 1337 superpower l00ph0l3z!!! It has like a force field so that the Supreme Court can't even talk about it, and plus it says that the FBI can execute you on the spot if you complain about the illegal wiretap. And also it disbands like the whole judiciarial branch and declares W to be the supreme emporer for life!!!
Real World -- The Federal Courts can and do review Patriot Act casee. Parts of it have been ruled unconstitutional. Like most laws, parts of it are better than others, and over time we'll decide, as a society, what we think belongs in "good" column and what belongs in the "bad" column. In the meantime, the ACLU and slashbots still have their constitutional right to complain about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's problem is not with open source software. They've said as much. Their problem is with open source software that they can't appropriate at will. They love the BSD license. It allows them to freeload off of others' work. The GPL on the other hand is clearly the enemy of free people everywhere and is likely to cause the End of the World as We Know It.
Funny, that's what the residents of Hiroshiman and Nagasaki thought about this time 60 years ago.
Which is a reasonable qualification if you're about to tell somebody that there is ONE good thing about Toyota, but you don't want them to think you're some kind of fan boy.
But what about the guy who got shot in the neck?
The biggest detonation by the U.S. and her cronies was the 15 MT Castle Bravo shot, which was actually an accident. It was only supposed to be about a quarter of that. Because it was bigger than it was supposed to be, it created a fallout disaster, including dosing up some Japanese fishermen on a vessel ironically named "Fifth Lucky Dragon" (it appears to have been fatal to one of the fishermen). Marshallese islanders also got heavy doses.
Isn't your .sig a little unfair to Tom Cruise? I mean honestly, one of those things isn't exactly his fault. Lots of current research shows that blithering idiocy is a hereditary characteristic.
All the people posting anti-IP slashbot rants about how this "proves" the failure of patent law need to pool their money and buy a dictionary or something.
I hate the Kelo decision as much as anybody (in fact, I haven't run into a single person who likes it), but lets not make it into a beast it's not.
Flame On!
Mt. Fuji is trivial. I move the whole friggin' Universe every time I get up to get a drink of water. I guess Microsoft has never heard of inertial reference frames.
Best. Play. Ever.
Be sure that the sales contract contains indemnification language against any possible injuries. There may be some potential hazards in a boating excursion on a lake full of methane.
No, it's not. My question (and the question the court was to decide) was whether Grokster specifically falls within the Betamax decision. The fact that P2P in general has non-infringing uses is part of that decision, but is hardly dispositive all by its lonesome (otherwise, the Court's decision would have been different). The court focused on how the software is advertised and promoted to determine how substantial the non-infringing uses were in this case. That means that if you create P2P software (let's hypothetically call it "BitTorrent") that is used largely for legal file transfers, and you don't tout its illegal capabilities to promote your business model of selling advertising, you should be okay under this ruling. That's as far as they had to go to dispose of this case. Sure, they could have mixed in some dicta if they wanted to, but to what end? Was there some pressing social policy that this decision did not adequately address as written?
It has always been a court's job (ANY court) to decide the case before it. Over time, the synthesis of those decisions becomes a body of common law, but that doesn't mean that a court is supposed to write an entire Restatement of File Sharing just because it sees a Grokster case. As for Bush v. Gore, the Court in that case did weasel out because it explicitly limited its ruling. That's a red flag for result-based decisions, and I found it disgusting because I agreed with the decision that they refused to make law. As it is, if a Democrat wins an election under similar circumstances, he can't rely on the Bush decision, which is just stupid. The court did not place any such limit on the Grokster decision. They issued a rule in this case. The fact that it is not as broad as you'd like does not make it deficient. Honestly, for all the complaint I've heard about this ruling, I haven't heard a proposed rule that makes a lot more sense. I don't particularly side with Grokster here. They made a business model out of copyright infringement. I'd say the Court did a good job of saying that they won't put up with that without destroying P2P.
To be quite precise, Art. III, Section 2 of the Constitution and the Erie doctrine tell the Court what cases it can hear. Within those bounds, their decision to grant certiorari can be as arbitrary as they please. Normally, they will hear cases that decide important legal questions because they feel that's how their time will best be spent. But again, the fact that the legal question they addressed is not the one you wanted them to address does not make them remiss.
I seem to remember them saying very clearly last Thursday that municipalities have essentially unfettered discretion in condemning property under the Fifth Amendment. The ruling was stupid, but it was hardly equivocal.
Nine justices. Nine points of view. They had to compromise. This was an issue that obviously sharply divided the court. The majorities were different in the two cases. As an alternative to compromising, they could delegate all decisions to Scalia. That would surely put an end to all this ambiguity.
Honestly, I don't know what all the uproar is over today. It seems pretty clear to me that Grokster was encouraging copyright infringement to get eyeballs on its advertisements. I would actually call today's decision a victory for P2P. Look at the court's language:
The question before the court was not "is a P2P company responsible for the copyright-infringing acts of its users." The question before the court was "Does Grokster get to benefit from the Betamax rule." It is not the court's job to decide some abstract, hypothetical dispute so that there are clear legal boundaries to every potential decision. The court's job was to decide the case before it, namely MGM v. Grokster (not All Media Content Providers v. Every Possible P2P Application in Existence). The court had to decide who wins between MGM and Grokster. If in the process, they state some fundamental legal doctrine with more broad applicability, hooray for whoever benefits from that decision. That doesn't mean they're remiss for not unnecessarily expanding the scope of this case. In fact, it's entirely possible in a hypothetical case of A v. B that 4 Justices say that A wins for reason X and 4 say A wins for reason Y, and one dissents and says B wins, so that the only legal rule that comes out of the decision is "A wins." A still wins, but it doesn't help anybody else, and that's okay.
Somebody mod parent up. That's the perfect analogy. If these guys were hosting your credit card numbers, would you then get a warm fuzzy about them hiding behind their Switzerland argument? What if Grokster was being used to share your server logs and the authors were advertising that use? Would you be all pissy about the S.Ct. making them liable? Let's get a reality check here today.
Shouldn't be a problem if they offer some obscure stuff you like. All the teenagers will be busy downloading Jessica Simpson from each other, and the main servers will be wide open for you.
That was exactly my thought when I first heard that forced pop culture catch phrase they were trying to push. Sure enough, just like you, I started hearing people say it and wanted to vomit. Their new hip-hop commercials have guaranteed that I will steer clear of the place. I don't care to socialize with the dread-locked-just-came-from-a-college-party-and-ha ve-the-MJ-munchies crowd they appear to be hoping to attract.
Slashdotland -- AAAAUUUGGGHHH! Patriot Act is teh SuX0r!!! They will use it to spy on you without a warrant while you surf pr0n and will then arrest you for having pictures of Brittney Spears on your computer!!! And they'll use it to restrict your fair use rights every time you log on to Bittorrent to use your fair use rights to fairly download the latest Avril Levign album!!! It's 3v17!!! It's totally unconstitutional. The 5th Amendment says so!!!
Real World -- The FBI doesn't care about your porn addiction. If you're illegally copying, distributing or receiving copyrigthed material, then you are breaking the law, so if you get caught, is it really that "unfair?" If the FBI catches you with a search performed without a warrant, be sure to tell your defense attorney to bring it up.
Slashdotland -- d00d! The Patriot Act has 1337 superpower l00ph0l3z!!! It has like a force field so that the Supreme Court can't even talk about it, and plus it says that the FBI can execute you on the spot if you complain about the illegal wiretap. And also it disbands like the whole judiciarial branch and declares W to be the supreme emporer for life!!!
Real World -- The Federal Courts can and do review Patriot Act casee. Parts of it have been ruled unconstitutional. Like most laws, parts of it are better than others, and over time we'll decide, as a society, what we think belongs in "good" column and what belongs in the "bad" column. In the meantime, the ACLU and slashbots still have their constitutional right to complain about it.