I don't really know why I should go through the trouble of finding perfectly googleable information for a random slashdot poster, but since I have some time to spend, here you go:
In considering what concessions or other obligations to suspend, the complaining party shall apply the following principles and procedures:
(a) the general principle is that the complaining party should first seek to suspend concessions or other obligations with respect to the same sector(s) as that in which the panel or Appellate Body has found a violation or other nullification or impairment;
(b) if that party considers that it is not practicable or effective to suspend concessions or other obligations with respect to the same sector(s), it may seek to suspend concessions or other obligations in other sectors under the same agreement. (emphasis added)
How else do you really think it could work? It's not like Antigua can extract billions of dollars by placing restrictions on how its citizens may use US gambling services. It must be able to enforce the treaties in question somehow, and that's exactly what WTO is: A framework for supervising member states' implementation of free trade and providing a way to respond to violations.
Think this way: If small developing country A is a big exports of bananas to the US, while US exports iPods to country A. Now if country A places restrictions to iPods that it doesn't place to other countries or locally produced producs, do you think the US can extract the lost revenue by placing restrictions on tech imports from country A? Sure, that's the preferred way (paragraph (a) above), but if it's just not adequate, US can place import tariffs on bananas.
Sorry, but that's exactly how WTO works and is supposed to work.
If the USA doesn't play by the WTO rules and hence cause another member to lose money, the other country can in compensation e.g. set high customs tariffs for some class of products from USA. It doesn't need to be related to the area where the US is noncompliant. How and whether the US handles it internally so it's fair to those who lose money because of the sanctions is strictly an internal matter for the US.
You cannot violate US copyright law if you have no ties to the US. Just like you don't usually say you violate Chinese laws while you have nothing to do with China.
0.01 would be percent. That's percent, as in 100 = total, 50 = half, you get the idea. IHNFC what a promille is, but please reveal your country, so I never happen to go there.
Very well. My country is Finland. As the other poster told you, the legal limit here is similar to most countries. However note that I didn't say 1 promille (1/1000) blood alcohol level is yet criminalized. 0.5 promilles is the legal driving limit, but it's pretty much socially accepted that if you drink, you don't drive, and vice versa, no matter how much you drink. And that's as it should be, alcohol and driving just don't mix (as I noted, in (non-Finnish) studies 0.1 promilles have significantly increased the risk of accidents). Why should the society tolerate some jerk drinking and significantly increasing the risk for others? 0.5 promilles usually only gets you a hefty fine in the first time, 1.2 promilles land you in jail. Unless you get in an accident, in which case >0.5 promilles makes you pretty much automatically the one with guilt, and the penalties are much stiffer. For the reference, 5 promilles pretty much kills you.
See this Wikipedia article for the limits in other countries. Note that quite few countries are as lax as the US.
We need responsibility in DUI Laws. Drunk driving is a terrible problem, but the way the states are dealing with it is not good. The BAC limits have been creeping ever so lower, as to raise the revenue from someone having a glass of wine after dinner when stopped at a roadblock. This is not actually helpful in impacting road safety.
Well, AFAIK, studies have shown that 0.01 blood alcohol level (I assume that's the same as 1 promille since I don't know what units you use in the US) already has a very significant impact on the accident risk. The US has internationally compared quite lax drunk driving laws (high allowed levels of alcohol and low penalties).
I live in a country where it's very well accepted that if you drink, you don't drive. What's wrong with that? It saves lives, that's a very good reason to give up that glass of wine if you need to drive.
I switched from mouses to trackballs some 7 years ago and my wrist problems vanished. I had a Logitech Cordless TrackMan Wheel since quite recently, and was fairly happy with it. I chose it because it felt so nice in the store. It took two months however to became used to it, and I think my thumb never got quite as accurate as I was with a mouse. Most importantly I felt it (the thumb, not the device) became less accurate after years of using it.
Now I'm using a Logitech Cordless TrackMan Optical, and I've been happy with it. I got used to it in a matter of days at most, and I can do more precise work with it.
To a mouse I'm not going back. I don't do graphics design.
And why in the ninth hell, WE (the rest of the world) are not forcing the US to eat their own fudge at our frontier?
Some are, like Brazil, IIRC. However as an European I'd prefer EU countries to not do that. If you think there are no freedoms in China, do you retaliate by not giving any freedom to Chinese tourists? Plus it hurts tourism, as a not insignificant side point, so let the countries like US and China deter tourism if they want. We don't need to do the same.
Because writing a check and mailing it to the recipient just is not the way that money transfers are done in the 21st century, and it's obviously very clumsy. In the rest of the modern world it stopped to be the way in maybe the 80s.
Funny that you should talk about 3rd world countries when your banking system (WTF, you actually still use checks?) is the most ancient in the first world.
And a memory debugger? I'm what you would call a professional programmer, and if you ask me if you need a memory debugger to start writing programs, then no, you don't.
Yes, Valgrind is great, and yes, I'd give it to any starter who needs to write something in C. But most programs would be better off written in some other language, like Python or Perl (or if you want or need static typing, I'd recommend something like SML or O'Caml). Or even Java. And I'm glad to claim that a huge portion of recent quality software for high level tasks is written in some language where you don't need the memory debugger, and that's the way it should be for high level programs.
The "instructions" given by the "professional programmer" seem in fact quite harmful to me. They make starting to program seem harder than it is. If you need to develop low level programs, then maybe yes, you need a memory debugger - and only then.
4. Could I be forced to publish this code by some 3-d party? Not if you do it right
More clear answer: No.
Even if you publish proprietary code linked to GPL code and swear you are aware of the violation, nobody can force you to disclose your code. It's a copyright violation, and forcing to publish code is not a remedy for copyright violation. In that hypothetical case the most a court would probably do is force you to stop distributing, and perhaps if it's that obvious you knew you were in violation it could order some punitive damages.
A license agreement is a contract, that's right. But a license agreement is a contract which gives the licensee a license to use the product. Most licenses get transferred without an explicit licensing agreement.
Software licenses are not covered under contract law. Don't worry, that's a very common mistake. They are licenses, one-sidedly declared exceptions to the protection afforded to the copyright holder by the copyright law (ie. "while the copyright law says person X may not do this, we hereby give him the permission to do so with the authority of the copyright holder").
EULAs take this a bit further by asserting that by clicking on "I Agree" you are entering into a contract. It might or might not be so, there is really not much relevant case law on the issue. However in quite many jurisdictions at least buying the software over the counter already gives you the right to run it (and please don't give me the BS about not having bought it, it's a product and you have bought it, it's yours). It is not exactly a claim without merit that to enter a contract by clicking the button you would have to at least get something you don't already have in exchange (well, at least in my jurisdiction). Hence it is not clear that EULAs are enforceable (although to be fair the opposite is not clear either). Since you have bought the software (freely downloaded software might be a bit more complicated), you arguably have the right to run it - and that includes running it on Sundays or without pants.
Of course if there's a technical restriction that actually stops you from running it on Sundays or without pants on, recent legal developments have made it possible that circumventing that could be illegal.
I think you are wrong in at least one count, and I heavily suspect another.
First of all, there is no such thing as "EU law". There are EU directives which do not (as far as I know) bind a single national court in the EU. The way they work is they require all the countries to implement national laws with the effect of the directive text. If there is no such law, the courts probably won't take the directives and apply them. Enforcement works by the EU Comission suing the country that has not in due time implemented the directive. This, if what you say, might or might not be bad for the developer of the software.
Second, with the scarce information I have about what was done, I gather the author of the software used APIs defined in.h files. At least unless the function names were obfuscated, I find it hard to believe this would count as reverse engineering. This should be good for the developer, since it means he's not constrained by the narrow language of where reverse engineering is allowed (even if this case might fall inside it).
And the US definition of "US" includes Texas, and several large pieces of former Indian land. Now that's not a problem, but it was once. What happened the last time Texas tried to secede? How about the right of Texas to secede that was explicitly written in its agreement to join the Union, IIRC?
Why do you pretend that such things only happen in China?
While I support independence for Taiwan, you do realize what happened the last time Texas & friends tried to gain independence, right? And IIRC Texas had the right to secede explicitly written in their agreement to join the Union. There are no such agreements between China and Taiwan.
See, there are more ways to view things than the Official Democratic US View(tm)?
Hard from crappy. Quantum cryptography suffers from that too. However it's unbreakable. Provably so. Without prior exchange of a key as large as the data being transmitted, and the key being used only once, some of the information from the plaintext can be extracted, given enough time or a significant mathematical breakthrough. No matter which crypto you use. Provably so.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really know why I should go through the trouble of finding perfectly googleable information for a random slashdot poster, but since I have some time to spend, here you go:
Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (in WTO), article 22.3:
In considering what concessions or other obligations to suspend, the complaining party shall apply the following principles and procedures:
(a) the general principle is that the complaining party should first seek to suspend concessions or other obligations with respect to the same sector(s) as that in which the panel or Appellate Body has found a violation or other nullification or impairment;
(b) if that party considers that it is not practicable or effective to suspend concessions or other obligations with respect to the same sector(s), it may seek to suspend concessions or other obligations in other sectors under the same agreement. (emphasis added)
How else do you really think it could work? It's not like Antigua can extract billions of dollars by placing restrictions on how its citizens may use US gambling services. It must be able to enforce the treaties in question somehow, and that's exactly what WTO is: A framework for supervising member states' implementation of free trade and providing a way to respond to violations.
Think this way: If small developing country A is a big exports of bananas to the US, while US exports iPods to country A. Now if country A places restrictions to iPods that it doesn't place to other countries or locally produced producs, do you think the US can extract the lost revenue by placing restrictions on tech imports from country A? Sure, that's the preferred way (paragraph (a) above), but if it's just not adequate, US can place import tariffs on bananas.
Fair enough?
Sorry, but that's exactly how WTO works and is supposed to work.
If the USA doesn't play by the WTO rules and hence cause another member to lose money, the other country can in compensation e.g. set high customs tariffs for some class of products from USA. It doesn't need to be related to the area where the US is noncompliant. How and whether the US handles it internally so it's fair to those who lose money because of the sanctions is strictly an internal matter for the US.
Well, it's not like Antiguans need some help from the US government to duplicate US movies, songs and software.
You cannot violate US copyright law if you have no ties to the US. Just like you don't usually say you violate Chinese laws while you have nothing to do with China.
That's security by obscurity, since obviously it's possible to observe who goes in in what order.
However removing the timestamps from the votes is a perfect way to solve this. That happens with traditional paper ballots.
Remember all those internet ads about "YOUR COMPUTER HAS OPEN PORTS !!!"
No, but I remember "Your computer is broadcasting an IP address!".
Well, here's a web page that quotes its sources. It was the first hit on Google with "alcohol level accidents".
I believe you are wrong in saying most of Europe has problems with alcohol.
It's not a "weenie" policy if it saves lives at the expense of a few jerks not being able to drink and then drive home.
0.01 would be percent. That's percent, as in 100 = total, 50 = half, you get the idea. IHNFC what a promille is, but please reveal your country, so I never happen to go there.
Very well. My country is Finland. As the other poster told you, the legal limit here is similar to most countries. However note that I didn't say 1 promille (1/1000) blood alcohol level is yet criminalized. 0.5 promilles is the legal driving limit, but it's pretty much socially accepted that if you drink, you don't drive, and vice versa, no matter how much you drink. And that's as it should be, alcohol and driving just don't mix (as I noted, in (non-Finnish) studies 0.1 promilles have significantly increased the risk of accidents). Why should the society tolerate some jerk drinking and significantly increasing the risk for others? 0.5 promilles usually only gets you a hefty fine in the first time, 1.2 promilles land you in jail. Unless you get in an accident, in which case >0.5 promilles makes you pretty much automatically the one with guilt, and the penalties are much stiffer. For the reference, 5 promilles pretty much kills you.
See this Wikipedia article for the limits in other countries. Note that quite few countries are as lax as the US.
We need responsibility in DUI Laws. Drunk driving is a terrible problem, but the way the states are dealing with it is not good. The BAC limits have been creeping ever so lower, as to raise the revenue from someone having a glass of wine after dinner when stopped at a roadblock. This is not actually helpful in impacting road safety.
Well, AFAIK, studies have shown that 0.01 blood alcohol level (I assume that's the same as 1 promille since I don't know what units you use in the US) already has a very significant impact on the accident risk. The US has internationally compared quite lax drunk driving laws (high allowed levels of alcohol and low penalties).
I live in a country where it's very well accepted that if you drink, you don't drive. What's wrong with that? It saves lives, that's a very good reason to give up that glass of wine if you need to drive.
I switched from mouses to trackballs some 7 years ago and my wrist problems vanished. I had a Logitech Cordless TrackMan Wheel since quite recently, and was fairly happy with it. I chose it because it felt so nice in the store. It took two months however to became used to it, and I think my thumb never got quite as accurate as I was with a mouse. Most importantly I felt it (the thumb, not the device) became less accurate after years of using it.
Now I'm using a Logitech Cordless TrackMan Optical, and I've been happy with it. I got used to it in a matter of days at most, and I can do more precise work with it.
To a mouse I'm not going back. I don't do graphics design.
Theoretical CS, Information Science and many other such branches are heavy in mathematics, and without them we wouldn't have, to name a few:
All these are way outside the range for the "php monkey" he probably has in mind as he talks about maths not being useful.
And why in the ninth hell, WE (the rest of the world) are not forcing the US to eat their own fudge at our frontier?
Some are, like Brazil, IIRC. However as an European I'd prefer EU countries to not do that. If you think there are no freedoms in China, do you retaliate by not giving any freedom to Chinese tourists? Plus it hurts tourism, as a not insignificant side point, so let the countries like US and China deter tourism if they want. We don't need to do the same.
Because writing a check and mailing it to the recipient just is not the way that money transfers are done in the 21st century, and it's obviously very clumsy. In the rest of the modern world it stopped to be the way in maybe the 80s.
Funny that you should talk about 3rd world countries when your banking system (WTF, you actually still use checks?) is the most ancient in the first world.
And a memory debugger? I'm what you would call a professional programmer, and if you ask me if you need a memory debugger to start writing programs, then no, you don't.
Yes, Valgrind is great, and yes, I'd give it to any starter who needs to write something in C. But most programs would be better off written in some other language, like Python or Perl (or if you want or need static typing, I'd recommend something like SML or O'Caml). Or even Java. And I'm glad to claim that a huge portion of recent quality software for high level tasks is written in some language where you don't need the memory debugger, and that's the way it should be for high level programs.
The "instructions" given by the "professional programmer" seem in fact quite harmful to me. They make starting to program seem harder than it is. If you need to develop low level programs, then maybe yes, you need a memory debugger - and only then.
4. Could I be forced to publish this code by some 3-d party? Not if you do it right
More clear answer: No.
Even if you publish proprietary code linked to GPL code and swear you are aware of the violation, nobody can force you to disclose your code. It's a copyright violation, and forcing to publish code is not a remedy for copyright violation. In that hypothetical case the most a court would probably do is force you to stop distributing, and perhaps if it's that obvious you knew you were in violation it could order some punitive damages.
A license agreement is a contract, that's right. But a license agreement is a contract which gives the licensee a license to use the product. Most licenses get transferred without an explicit licensing agreement.
Software licenses are not covered under contract law. Don't worry, that's a very common mistake. They are licenses, one-sidedly declared exceptions to the protection afforded to the copyright holder by the copyright law (ie. "while the copyright law says person X may not do this, we hereby give him the permission to do so with the authority of the copyright holder").
EULAs take this a bit further by asserting that by clicking on "I Agree" you are entering into a contract. It might or might not be so, there is really not much relevant case law on the issue. However in quite many jurisdictions at least buying the software over the counter already gives you the right to run it (and please don't give me the BS about not having bought it, it's a product and you have bought it, it's yours). It is not exactly a claim without merit that to enter a contract by clicking the button you would have to at least get something you don't already have in exchange (well, at least in my jurisdiction). Hence it is not clear that EULAs are enforceable (although to be fair the opposite is not clear either). Since you have bought the software (freely downloaded software might be a bit more complicated), you arguably have the right to run it - and that includes running it on Sundays or without pants.
Of course if there's a technical restriction that actually stops you from running it on Sundays or without pants on, recent legal developments have made it possible that circumventing that could be illegal.
I think you are wrong in at least one count, and I heavily suspect another.
.h files. At least unless the function names were obfuscated, I find it hard to believe this would count as reverse engineering. This should be good for the developer, since it means he's not constrained by the narrow language of where reverse engineering is allowed (even if this case might fall inside it).
First of all, there is no such thing as "EU law". There are EU directives which do not (as far as I know) bind a single national court in the EU. The way they work is they require all the countries to implement national laws with the effect of the directive text. If there is no such law, the courts probably won't take the directives and apply them. Enforcement works by the EU Comission suing the country that has not in due time implemented the directive. This, if what you say, might or might not be bad for the developer of the software.
Second, with the scarce information I have about what was done, I gather the author of the software used APIs defined in
You mean like the indian lands that were annexed into the US?
I too actually find recursion often the more intuitive way. It must be the background in mathematics.
And the US definition of "US" includes Texas, and several large pieces of former Indian land. Now that's not a problem, but it was once. What happened the last time Texas tried to secede? How about the right of Texas to secede that was explicitly written in its agreement to join the Union, IIRC?
Why do you pretend that such things only happen in China?
While I support independence for Taiwan, you do realize what happened the last time Texas & friends tried to gain independence, right? And IIRC Texas had the right to secede explicitly written in their agreement to join the Union. There are no such agreements between China and Taiwan.
See, there are more ways to view things than the Official Democratic US View(tm)?
Hardly crappy. I'm not sure I want to know what I was thinking when I wrote that.
Hard from crappy. Quantum cryptography suffers from that too. However it's unbreakable. Provably so. Without prior exchange of a key as large as the data being transmitted, and the key being used only once, some of the information from the plaintext can be extracted, given enough time or a significant mathematical breakthrough. No matter which crypto you use. Provably so.