2. Even when it's criminal law, entrapment only applies to law enforcement. And even then, there is a huge gray area in what's entrapment and what is working undercover operations.
3. Sure they could counter sue, but what if I legally owned those MP3s, and not a single person outside of the RIAA downloaded those MP3s? ie. the web server was freshly setup and then a "Tip" was sent to the RIAA about the website. No one outside of the RIAA would even know to look for the MP3s. So where is the countersuit?
And further more, what if I misconfigure Apache and accidentally give access to the world my personal MP3 collection that I keep on my harddrive of CDs I legally own? That doesn't justify them going into my computer, and deleting the MP3s. How would they know what exactly to delete? What if in deleting the MP3s they accidentally cause harm to important data?
What I'd love to see happen is a honeypot setup where the RIAA gets notice of it, then the domain is directed to a.mil address. I'd love to see the United States Military questioning why the RIAA were attempting to login or potentially denial of service attack their systems.
Actually, it does. The GPL isn't a Copyright type, it's an End User License Agreement. It's contract made between the End User, and the Copyright owner.
You'll notice the Copyright XXXX Authors Name
This piece of software is owned by the author who wrote it. However the license allows for the distribution you outline above. But because you don't own it, you can't say for example, change the license. However the Author can, but the Author can't change the license on the distributed copies, nor can they change the license on patches and code submitted with the intent of it remaining GPL without written consent from all the patch/code writers.
This is why for example, I could take a piece of software say Widget Factory version 1.0. And distribute Widget Factory version 1.0 under the GPL. Providing I never accepted patches or code from anyone else, I can take Widget Factory version 2.0, and distribute it under my own license, with new features closed source.
Sure anyone else can take Widget Factory version 1.0 and modify it so it works like my 2.0 closed source version, or even branch it off and continue to make new different versions of the software. But all of those incarnations must remain GPL. This is where the "Virual" part of GPL is. That doesn't make it bad, it just makes it what it is. Don't confuse it for being as free as public domain though, because it is most definitely not.
Public Domain is the only "license" for software where you can take the software, and call it your own. If Widget Factory 1.0 were made under public domain, and given the same situation where I make Widget Factory 2.0 closed source, someone can take Widget Factory 1.0, call it Widget Factory The Next Generation, and close source it.
That's a freedom you don't get with GPL. It's up to you if you want to restrict that freedom or not.
Actually it just requires anything that can use JDBC. I could for example, use JNI or the opposite of JNI (cant think of the name) where you link to Java code from C to initiate calls to the JDBC driver for the cluster. For example within PHP I can create Java classes using the Java extension, so there is no reason I couldn't use PHP to connect to this cluster. Same with Perl, and just about any other language.
Granted, I would have liked to see a more generic implementation but whats it going to be generic in? C? You'd still need to write an interface for it anyway from every other language, it just so happens they wrote it in Java so every gets all up in arms about it.
My point exactly. If I had originally created Application X and licensed it under the GPL, accepted patches from people who understood the application was GPL, then I can no longer close source my application.
Just in the same way I can "close source" any GPL application but I can't release it, I can only use it myself. The point is once you get going with an application under the GPL, you have little chances of turning back.
Where as I can just public domain my software, and its as free as air. No one, not even the mighty RMS himself can claim that much freedom in a license.
Stick to public domain. GPL is no more free than Microsoft, just each end an extreme. Microsoft, no source, no tampering, no nothing. GPL, Always source, no matter what. Sure it works for some, I have a few projects I own that are GPL, incidentally because I originally unknowingly GPL'd them, and a few now that are public domain. I prefer public domain, there is little to no worries at all on it. I'm even more free in the choice because I could one day take works I put into public domain and use them in a closed source application, such as for consulting work. People will benefit from the source I had originally made, and I benefit in the fact I can use the work in closed environments.
'We must ask ourselves what Elvis would do to stop the theft of music via the Internet, now so widespread and so brazen that it makes the Baghdad looters look like trick-or-treaters.'"
Considering Elvis was the "bad-ass" of his time, he would probably be trading music with the rest of us. I don't know about you, but not all the Baghdad looters are bad, mostly the ones stealing from the hospitals and muesums that are bad, but even then you can't say trading music is worse than stealing needed medical equipment that would have been used to save lives. The only thing I'm depriving someone by stealing music is buying that brand new porsche to add to the collection, fucking Hillary Rosen.
One day history books are going to record how the american music industry burried itself by treating its clientel like criminals. Let me ask this though, why bother saving the music industry? The meat of the music industry isn't the companies distributing the recordings, its the artists performing the music. If the Internet enables people to get the music directly from the artist, and low cost recording equipment and instruments allow the artists to mix and record their own music, what the hell is wrong with that?
The RIAA is an obsolete business, thank god we didn't have the United States postal service going after the Internet because Email was causing them to lose postage stamp sales (they almost did). Someone came up with a better way, and you can't fight that. No matter what you do, the RIAA is going to be obsolete in probably 10 years.. The question is how much damage are they going to cause on the way down. Companies like the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Sony, that think they can control the consumers make me want to change my profession from an engineer to a lawyer so I go after these damn corporations myself..
I agree, but you have to consider the context. It's not as black and white as that.
For example, someone who has been convicted of molesting little boys. He goes to jail for 5 years. According to your logic, once he's out he's just a member of society just like the rest of us. So there should be no problem putting him charge of a boyscout troop. Or we shouldn't worry if he starts his own daycare center. Obviously not, thats why we have the sexual predator watch lists. Because we inheritantly don't trust him in that context. Now, take that same fellon, and I put him in charge of a bank vault, why should I worry? He wasn't convicted of robbing a bank, he was convicted of molesting little boys.
Even in that, it isn't as black and white as I paint it. Kevin Mitnick's only true crime was stealing AT&T's source code to UNIX. He didn't hack the pentagon, he couldn't launch a nuclear missile from a prison payphone, and he never stole millions of dollars from a bank, that was proven to be a clerical error. However, the media and the prosecutor painted him out to be this horrible cyberterrorist that could destroy all of man kind with a keyboard. So maybe you wouldn't want to trust Kevin Mitnick with the source code to your companies proprietary software, but other than that he never commited any real 'hacking' crimes.
It's all about context, and the legal system is suppose to take that into account to, that's why that phrase 'make the punishment fit the crime' is used. Of course, because of the extremes on 9/11, with so many people dead, it was easy to infurriate millions of people, and have things like the PATRIOT act passed without real though to the consequences, or to start considering anyone that commits a crime a terrorist, But eventually this kind of thinking will subside.
But well, 2 cents and all, entitled to your opinions, blah blah etc..
Sure all they see is a program. But if this case were if a person were allowed to replace a part of their cars engine, and the car manufacturer didn't release any specifications, and the person was seeking a ruling allowing him to open up his hood and look around, I think we'd all, including the judge, be laughing at the notion.
But no, it's a mysterious thing called software which somehow is so much different than everything else in the world it requires its own set of protections. Hogwash.
And lets not forget the single online industry that brought in profits, and continues to bring in profits in spite of an economy where the mere mention of the Internet sends shudders down the spines of accountants and stockholders everywhere.
It's also a metaphor to mean "A LOT", or "extremely long". My case, A LOT.
And to split hairs, the definition also defines it as a period of time too which can be used to express speed based on distance and time.
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):
Light year \Light year\ (Astron.)
The distance over which light can travel in a year's time; --
used as a unit in expressing stellar distances. It is more
than 63,000 times as great as the distance from the earth to
the sun.
To sum it up, Traveling 63,000 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun in one years time is fucking fast.
Very bad idea in my opinion. What happens when you get into Open Source Software? If the government thinks imposing tariffs on software is a good idea, they might deem it ALL software, including Open Source. So will that mean for every time I download OpenBSD I'm going to have to pay a tariff? What about software mirrors? Components? Data itself? I'd rather not open up that can of worms..
Ah, I see. Yes, I developed a widget framework system using Objects, basically an object for each available XHTML element, attribute management, then more complex objects built off the XHTML Element objects to create complex forms and interfaces. PHP's single greatest bottleneck with speed is Zend 1's object creation. Creating around 100-200 objects dynamically takes 5 - 6 seconds to do.
So I created a complicated caching system to eliminate this. However, Zend 2, the engine in PHP 5 has a completely redone OO system. This makes it lightyears faster. I agree though Ruby is a focused OO system, however I enjoy PHP's procedural aspects as well. To each his own though.
Specifics? I'm running a large internal PHP project, around 300 PHP files, about 2 megs of PHP code in total, and my page loads are fine, fractions of a second. The biggest bottleneck isn't PHP, but database queries in my project. So I'd like to hear about some specifics on what was causing problems.
Of course its not fair or valid to say "Well I had these problems 3 years ago so it still applies today"..
You can return your old Gameboy Advance for 40 dollars off a Gameboy Advance SP. Seems like a pretty fair and reasonable deal to me. I plan on doing that myself.
He only got paid 2 million for a movie that grossed over 800M during its run. Sure, 2 million is a lot, but the movie made 800 million. 800 million! Meanwhile each cast member of friends gets paid a million for a 20 minute long episode...
If its criminal law, which it might be under the DMCA, an employer can't force you to do it. It's a basic employment right. Just like your employer can't fire you because you refuse to dump toxic chemicals.
I've often wondered what I'd do if there were some kind of mass catastrophy headed our way. And I don't mean Osama setting off a Nuke on the east coast, or something, I'm talking about real apocolyptic stuff, the stuff that would destroy our entire society. Of course the first thought is to stock up on Guns, Food, Water and Toilet Paper. Build a shelter of some kind, that sort of stuff.
Then I'm reminded that in those situations, the people that die are often the lucky ones. So I'm torn, try to survive or just give up. I'm not sure I'd want to live a life in a post apocolyptic world anyway. So I say when the big one hits, I only need 3 supplies. A Ladder, A Lawn Chair and A bottle of Southern Comfort. This way at least I have a decent view.
The first company the government is going to point to is id Software. They're extremely profitable, and what, only 20 employees now? Used to be a lot less.
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1. Entrapment doesn't apply to civil law.
.mil address. I'd love to see the United States Military questioning why the RIAA were attempting to login or potentially denial of service attack their systems.
2. Even when it's criminal law, entrapment only applies to law enforcement. And even then, there is a huge gray area in what's entrapment and what is working undercover operations.
3. Sure they could counter sue, but what if I legally owned those MP3s, and not a single person outside of the RIAA downloaded those MP3s? ie. the web server was freshly setup and then a "Tip" was sent to the RIAA about the website. No one outside of the RIAA would even know to look for the MP3s. So where is the countersuit?
And further more, what if I misconfigure Apache and accidentally give access to the world my personal MP3 collection that I keep on my harddrive of CDs I legally own? That doesn't justify them going into my computer, and deleting the MP3s. How would they know what exactly to delete? What if in deleting the MP3s they accidentally cause harm to important data?
What I'd love to see happen is a honeypot setup where the RIAA gets notice of it, then the domain is directed to a
Lets not forget the 0.1 kernel was based on Minix. Whew.
That I'm using MSN while taking a shit.
Actually, it does. The GPL isn't a Copyright type, it's an End User License Agreement. It's contract made between the End User, and the Copyright owner.
You'll notice the Copyright XXXX Authors Name
This piece of software is owned by the author who wrote it. However the license allows for the distribution you outline above. But because you don't own it, you can't say for example, change the license. However the Author can, but the Author can't change the license on the distributed copies, nor can they change the license on patches and code submitted with the intent of it remaining GPL without written consent from all the patch/code writers.
This is why for example, I could take a piece of software say Widget Factory version 1.0. And distribute Widget Factory version 1.0 under the GPL. Providing I never accepted patches or code from anyone else, I can take Widget Factory version 2.0, and distribute it under my own license, with new features closed source.
Sure anyone else can take Widget Factory version 1.0 and modify it so it works like my 2.0 closed source version, or even branch it off and continue to make new different versions of the software. But all of those incarnations must remain GPL. This is where the "Virual" part of GPL is. That doesn't make it bad, it just makes it what it is. Don't confuse it for being as free as public domain though, because it is most definitely not.
Public Domain is the only "license" for software where you can take the software, and call it your own. If Widget Factory 1.0 were made under public domain, and given the same situation where I make Widget Factory 2.0 closed source, someone can take Widget Factory 1.0, call it Widget Factory The Next Generation, and close source it.
That's a freedom you don't get with GPL. It's up to you if you want to restrict that freedom or not.
Just like Napster never forced anyone to download and distribute copyrighted MP3s, yeah this defense works well :)
Actually it just requires anything that can use JDBC. I could for example, use JNI or the opposite of JNI (cant think of the name) where you link to Java code from C to initiate calls to the JDBC driver for the cluster. For example within PHP I can create Java classes using the Java extension, so there is no reason I couldn't use PHP to connect to this cluster. Same with Perl, and just about any other language.
Granted, I would have liked to see a more generic implementation but whats it going to be generic in? C? You'd still need to write an interface for it anyway from every other language, it just so happens they wrote it in Java so every gets all up in arms about it.
My point exactly. If I had originally created Application X and licensed it under the GPL, accepted patches from people who understood the application was GPL, then I can no longer close source my application.
Just in the same way I can "close source" any GPL application but I can't release it, I can only use it myself. The point is once you get going with an application under the GPL, you have little chances of turning back.
Where as I can just public domain my software, and its as free as air. No one, not even the mighty RMS himself can claim that much freedom in a license.
Stick to public domain. GPL is no more free than Microsoft, just each end an extreme. Microsoft, no source, no tampering, no nothing. GPL, Always source, no matter what. Sure it works for some, I have a few projects I own that are GPL, incidentally because I originally unknowingly GPL'd them, and a few now that are public domain. I prefer public domain, there is little to no worries at all on it. I'm even more free in the choice because I could one day take works I put into public domain and use them in a closed source application, such as for consulting work. People will benefit from the source I had originally made, and I benefit in the fact I can use the work in closed environments.
'We must ask ourselves what Elvis would do to stop the theft of music via the Internet, now so widespread and so brazen that it makes the Baghdad looters look like trick-or-treaters.'"
Considering Elvis was the "bad-ass" of his time, he would probably be trading music with the rest of us. I don't know about you, but not all the Baghdad looters are bad, mostly the ones stealing from the hospitals and muesums that are bad, but even then you can't say trading music is worse than stealing needed medical equipment that would have been used to save lives. The only thing I'm depriving someone by stealing music is buying that brand new porsche to add to the collection, fucking Hillary Rosen.
One day history books are going to record how the american music industry burried itself by treating its clientel like criminals. Let me ask this though, why bother saving the music industry? The meat of the music industry isn't the companies distributing the recordings, its the artists performing the music. If the Internet enables people to get the music directly from the artist, and low cost recording equipment and instruments allow the artists to mix and record their own music, what the hell is wrong with that?
The RIAA is an obsolete business, thank god we didn't have the United States postal service going after the Internet because Email was causing them to lose postage stamp sales (they almost did). Someone came up with a better way, and you can't fight that. No matter what you do, the RIAA is going to be obsolete in probably 10 years.. The question is how much damage are they going to cause on the way down. Companies like the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Sony, that think they can control the consumers make me want to change my profession from an engineer to a lawyer so I go after these damn corporations myself..
Ugh, infuriating..
I agree, but you have to consider the context. It's not as black and white as that.
For example, someone who has been convicted of molesting little boys. He goes to jail for 5 years. According to your logic, once he's out he's just a member of society just like the rest of us. So there should be no problem putting him charge of a boyscout troop. Or we shouldn't worry if he starts his own daycare center. Obviously not, thats why we have the sexual predator watch lists. Because we inheritantly don't trust him in that context. Now, take that same fellon, and I put him in charge of a bank vault, why should I worry? He wasn't convicted of robbing a bank, he was convicted of molesting little boys.
Even in that, it isn't as black and white as I paint it. Kevin Mitnick's only true crime was stealing AT&T's source code to UNIX. He didn't hack the pentagon, he couldn't launch a nuclear missile from a prison payphone, and he never stole millions of dollars from a bank, that was proven to be a clerical error. However, the media and the prosecutor painted him out to be this horrible cyberterrorist that could destroy all of man kind with a keyboard. So maybe you wouldn't want to trust Kevin Mitnick with the source code to your companies proprietary software, but other than that he never commited any real 'hacking' crimes.
It's all about context, and the legal system is suppose to take that into account to, that's why that phrase 'make the punishment fit the crime' is used. Of course, because of the extremes on 9/11, with so many people dead, it was easy to infurriate millions of people, and have things like the PATRIOT act passed without real though to the consequences, or to start considering anyone that commits a crime a terrorist, But eventually this kind of thinking will subside.
But well, 2 cents and all, entitled to your opinions, blah blah etc..
By far is the most researched topic online.
Sure all they see is a program. But if this case were if a person were allowed to replace a part of their cars engine, and the car manufacturer didn't release any specifications, and the person was seeking a ruling allowing him to open up his hood and look around, I think we'd all, including the judge, be laughing at the notion.
But no, it's a mysterious thing called software which somehow is so much different than everything else in the world it requires its own set of protections. Hogwash.
Its a bunch of systems. They administrate them. Simple.
And lets not forget the single online industry that brought in profits, and continues to bring in profits in spite of an economy where the mere mention of the Internet sends shudders down the spines of accountants and stockholders everywhere.
It's also a metaphor to mean "A LOT", or "extremely long". My case, A LOT.
:
And to split hairs, the definition also defines it as a period of time too which can be used to express speed based on distance and time.
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
Light year \Light year\ (Astron.)
The distance over which light can travel in a year's time; --
used as a unit in expressing stellar distances. It is more
than 63,000 times as great as the distance from the earth to
the sun.
To sum it up, Traveling 63,000 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun in one years time is fucking fast.
Very bad idea in my opinion. What happens when you get into Open Source Software? If the government thinks imposing tariffs on software is a good idea, they might deem it ALL software, including Open Source. So will that mean for every time I download OpenBSD I'm going to have to pay a tariff? What about software mirrors? Components? Data itself? I'd rather not open up that can of worms..
Ah, I see. Yes, I developed a widget framework system using Objects, basically an object for each available XHTML element, attribute management, then more complex objects built off the XHTML Element objects to create complex forms and interfaces. PHP's single greatest bottleneck with speed is Zend 1's object creation. Creating around 100-200 objects dynamically takes 5 - 6 seconds to do.
So I created a complicated caching system to eliminate this. However, Zend 2, the engine in PHP 5 has a completely redone OO system. This makes it lightyears faster. I agree though Ruby is a focused OO system, however I enjoy PHP's procedural aspects as well. To each his own though.
Specifics? I'm running a large internal PHP project, around 300 PHP files, about 2 megs of PHP code in total, and my page loads are fine, fractions of a second. The biggest bottleneck isn't PHP, but database queries in my project. So I'd like to hear about some specifics on what was causing problems.
Of course its not fair or valid to say "Well I had these problems 3 years ago so it still applies today"..
You can return your old Gameboy Advance for 40 dollars off a Gameboy Advance SP. Seems like a pretty fair and reasonable deal to me. I plan on doing that myself.
He only got paid 2 million for a movie that grossed over 800M during its run. Sure, 2 million is a lot, but the movie made 800 million. 800 million! Meanwhile each cast member of friends gets paid a million for a 20 minute long episode...
If its criminal law, which it might be under the DMCA, an employer can't force you to do it. It's a basic employment right. Just like your employer can't fire you because you refuse to dump toxic chemicals.
Civil though, I have no idea...
Since you signed or consented to the contract which stated they were.
Get on my roof of course, I need a good view. :)
I've often wondered what I'd do if there were some kind of mass catastrophy headed our way. And I don't mean Osama setting off a Nuke on the east coast, or something, I'm talking about real apocolyptic stuff, the stuff that would destroy our entire society. Of course the first thought is to stock up on Guns, Food, Water and Toilet Paper. Build a shelter of some kind, that sort of stuff.
Then I'm reminded that in those situations, the people that die are often the lucky ones. So I'm torn, try to survive or just give up. I'm not sure I'd want to live a life in a post apocolyptic world anyway. So I say when the big one hits, I only need 3 supplies. A Ladder, A Lawn Chair and A bottle of Southern Comfort. This way at least I have a decent view.
The first company the government is going to point to is id Software. They're extremely profitable, and what, only 20 employees now? Used to be a lot less.