1. Oxford was not being sued over it. Oxford received a standard cease-and-desist letter.
2. Students do pay for access. It's this little-known fee called tuition.
3. As it is, Oxford has a hell of a lot of money.
4. The page contained no copyright violating material. The content of the page was a parody of the whole DeCSS battle. Parody is a protected form of speech. Since the parody used entirely new material in order to create a Cascading Style Sheet filter, the parody protection (of fair use against copyright violation accusations) is not even necessary. Anyone can use the name DeCSS to refer to anything they wish. It is not a trademark. A claim of copyright infringemnet against the page is completely without merit, obvious to anyone who spent even half a minute reading the page. The page in question contained all new material authored by the student (until it was removed without due process from a false accusation).
Go Video has the entire patent rights to dual-deck VCRs. They charge exhorbitant amounts for one of their machines -- the price is on par with buying two separate VCRs. In this manner, no copyright cartel has impetus to go after them, because anyone can buy two separate VCRs and do the same thing at the same price.
I'm guessing Amstrad violated Go Video's patents and that is why they went out of business.
You've taken my heady idealism a little too seriously. The goal of alchemy was to turn base metal into gold. That is not a possible chemical reaction. Neither is air + water = elect. Both are pipe dreams. And I freely admit that. Still, the realm of the impossible provides exellent fodder for the imagination, and does not necessarily make me a troll.
So, false advertising, eh? Will the FTC handle slapping HP a penalty or will a class action lawsuit be necessary?
If you look here it appears that 12-bit color is not that much worse than 16-bit. Still, 65,536 colors does beat 4,096 colors. I wonder how much difference it makes on a small handheld screen anyway?
The spec page now says it's a "240 x 320 pixels LCD rich color display".
Some kind soul has reversed-engineered Microsoft's embraced-extended-extinguished version of kerberos. A full working version can be found at the above link. Please, spread the meme (for a month or two). Then don't worry about it, cause who really wants to help Microsoft conform to standards.
They don't want to play fair, and that's why they're being broken up. Once the monopoly is gone, the necessity to ensure Microsoft conforms to standards will no longer exist (market forces will take up the slack). I love a free market economy, especially when anti-competitive monopolists are put into check.
The lead-acid battery is on the way out. It doesn't work all that well, takes up a lot of room, weighs a ton, and royally screws the environment.
I really dig the advanced flywheel and carbon nanotube stuff. But wouldn't it be even better if no batteries were necesary? We have lots and lots of water and we have lots and lots of air. It would be really cool to develop a mechanism to generate electricity using H20 and the chemical compunds found in air (Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Oxygen, etc.) on the spot. Fuel cells are becoming better and better. An Air/Water Cell is the next logical step.
A machine which converted water and air to electricity sounds much like the goal of alchemy. It is a pipe dream. Yes. But e- wants to be free.
Once external energy becomes freely available to everyone anywhere, all manners of political change would follow, not least which would be more free software.
I'm going to reproduce an AC's post found here because it seems very relevant to the copyright issue.
There is an interesting precedent on what happens when copyright and first-amendment collide. Some decades ago, the Soviets published a badly bawdlerized version of a dissident's book that had become widely acclaimed in hand-copied "samizdat" editions. When the original was smuggled to the West and published here, the Soviet "publisher" sued for violation of copyright. The court, in throwing out the lawsuit, reasoned that copyright law was being used to stifle a protected political debate: about Communist _praxis_ then, about Microsoft's extend-to-destroy strategy now.
The core of the court's reasoning was based on the original purpose of each clause. When two constitutonal provisions collide, the one that is being used for its original constitutional purpose prevails. The purpose of copyrights was to promote the dissemination of knowledge, by giving a financial incentive to writing and publication. This is the central purpose that must be protected. Other uses of copyright, such as trying to halt the spread of of information that might harm the political interests of the copyright owner, enjoy a lower level of protection, particularly when they act against the original purpose of copyright, and hinder, rather than promote, the dissemination of ideas. Similarly, the original purpose of free speech guarantees was to promote unhindered debate of political issues. Other uses of the 1st amendment's guarantee of free expression - for example, the provision of pornography to masturbators - enjoy less protection. Such secondary uses of the free-spech guarantee may have to give way when they are in conflict wih the central purpose of some other constitutional provision.
In the case that set the precedent - just like the case now - the 1st amendment case involved publication of material going to the heart of a public political controversy, the exact purpose for which the 1st amendment was written into our constituton. As for copyright, it was being used then - just like now - directly _against_ the original constitutional purpose. The Soviets then, and Microsoft now, have tried to use copyright to hinder, rather than promote, the dissemination of knowledge. I hope that the above will help/. apply the precedent to your present case.
The above is a very reasonable argument for why Slashdot should not have to censor the offendings posts.
I understand that everything Corel touches turns to sh-- lately. (I've read this many different place. Of course, just cause people say it doesn't mean it's true.)
There is a clear counterexample though: Linux. Corel has been very supportive of Linux. And the prospects for Linux lie well beyond 2001. Corel may have a future after all. It could be very bright.
My question: How can we get NSI out of the role of running the registry database?
Well, looked it up and it won't be long depending on a couple of things:
23. Expiration of this Agreement. The Expiration Date shall be four years after the Effective Date, unless extended as provided below. In the event that NSI completes the legal separation of ownership of its Registry Services business from its registrar business by divesting all the assets and operations of one of those businesses within 18 months after Effective Date to an unaffiliated third party that enters an agreement enforceable by ICANN and the Department of Commerce (i) not to be both a registry and a registrar in the Registry TLDs, and (ii) not to control, own or have as an affiliate any individual(s) or entity(ies) that, collectively, act as both a registry and a registrar in the Registry TLDs, the Expiration Date shall be extended for an additional four years, resulting in a total term of eight years. For the purposes of this Section, "unaffiliated third party" means any entity in which NSI (including its successors and assigns, subsidiaries and divisions, and their respective directors, officers, employees, agents and representatives) does not have majority equity ownership or the ability to exercise managerial or operational control, either directly or indirectly through one or more intermediaries. "Control," as used in this Section 23, means any of the following: (1) ownership, directly or indirectly, or other interest entitling NSI to exercise in the aggregate 25% or more of the voting power of an entity; (2) the power, directly or indirectly, to elect 25% or more of the board of directors (or equivalent governing body) of an entity; or (3) the ability, directly or indirectly, to direct or cause the direction of the management, operations, or policies of an entity.
There is a great post on the copyright issue here. It explains how free speech rights overcome Microsoft's specious copyright argument. It even uses a legal precedent from Soviet-era U.S. politics.
And, there is an interpretation of the Microsoft kerberos specification here -- does not use any material on which Microsoft can claim copyright, much like DeCSS. This is the version people should link to and post around the web. Very nice.
Slashdot has no duty to take down the 'offending' posts. Did you even take the time to read them? Only one of the posts MS refers to even contains the Kerberos stuff. The remainder are links to off-site locations or written descriptions of how to download the kerberos information from Microsoft's own site without being forced to agree to give up your rights. A few of the posts are mere criticisms of Microsoft's policies (and nothing more). So, in fact, there is only a single offending post.
Slashdot could be pursued under regular copyright law for this one post (even though it is very arguable that the AC owns the post and thus is responsible).
Unfortunately, Microsoft is currently pursuing Slashdot using the DCMA. The DCMA is inherently unconstitutional. Therefore, Slashdot has a duty not to remove the post. Instead Slashdot must stand up to Microsoft's corporate bullying and Microsoft's attempts to extinguish a previously open security standard. We must not allow Microsoft to destroy kerberos. That is our duty.
If you or anyone else does not want to be a part of this fight, that is fine. But don't go around spreading misinformation. Slashdot is not going to be shut down over this. If anything, Slashdot will become stronger as a result.
Yes, but Microsoft is doing it with what is suppose to be an open standard by leveraging copyright & 'trade secret' law to its own embraced & extended version. MS has no patent.
It is really disgraceful the way Microsoft parades around doing stuff like this while its anti-trust trial is underway.
It's nice to have voice and data over the same line, but with DSL you have to pay separately for each. DSL will run you $50-70 a month (residential) and then the voice connection is another $20 plus. With the IP phone, all you need is the data connection (DSL). No extra phone charges! (And the satisfaction of knowing you aren't supporting one of the regional monopoly local telcos.)
Also, you can probably add more IP phones (each with a separate number) to the data connection for no extra charge. Effectively you get multiple phone lines for free.
IANAL, but a law school student told me about a classic case involving a sculpter who sculpted a statue while working under contract. Later, he made some more of the statues separately and sold them to whomever. The original group which contracted him sued and the case went up to the Supreme Court where the sculpter's copyright rights were upheld. (I'm not sure what the legal arguments were.) So, apparently, there is legal precedent for a (sub)contractor claiming copyright on his work, but this is ridiculous. Should be an interesting test case to see if a court can understand HTML. (My take: company X loses.)
From the website: Works with over 300 games (and growing!).
You can also try Virtual Game Station which does about 200 games plus some PAL games (the Mac version does a lot more, but it came out almost a year ago).
I AGREE, OOG. Will BLOW SOME KARMA to SHOW MY SUPPORT. I also do not think OOG is a troll. (An all bold filter would be much more useful.) Caps are like yelling, but THEY ARE NOT. They are caps. Easily moderated down if the content is not liked. I can understand the 70 second rule, but this is ridiculous. I've recommended this before, but a fractional point system where each moderator gets about 25 one-fifth Troll points to apply would solve much of Trolling. Five people with moderation would have to agree a post is a Troll. Then it would get moderated down 1 point. Easy cake. Filtering of what gets posted is simple censorship. I thought that was what moderation was suppose to avoid -- censorship.:(
The problem is that Network Solutions was (and still is) a private (only) for-profit company. They sought to relax all the requirements between org, com, & net tld's and then *sold* as many of them as they could. Instead of the domain naming system acting to help people find or create things on the Internet, we have the majority of domain names going unused, having been secured by individuals and companies hoping to profit just as NSI did with their original sale. (And NSI gets yearly rent.) It is very unfortunate that the company put in charge of domain name registration many years ago was a profit-driven company. Somebody pocketed a lot of money for that to have happended.
It has been a little over a year ago since registrar competition was introduced. But it is much too late to fix this system. The whole thing should be scrapped and new domains should be given out much like vanity license plates -- you can't sell yours to another: if you don't want it or use it, it goes back to the state to be reused. And NSI should have nothing to do with it.
Make sure Intel replaces your whole motherboard or else you will be stuck having to buy the 6-8 times more expensive RAMBUS memory when you upgrade later.
It is almost as though Intel planned this so that RAMBUS will get some guaranteed sales early on. Then Intel and RAMBUS can get together and issue a press release detailing the huge initial adoption by consumers of RAMBUS memory over regular memory (without mentioning that the surge is an artificial byproduct of Intel's defective motherboards).
Number 2 is probably exactly what they are shooting for. By having the design public, they can say to the courts: 'yes, obviously, our competitor just looked at our design -- which by the way is public -- and copied it.'
What I'm hoping, though, is that peer-review will reveal that Intel has infringed other people's patents in the Itanium design. That would be a nice unintended side-effect since Intel likes to sue everyone else all the time over chip designs.
I like English. Everyone uses it on the net (cause the URL/tld name system is based on it). Other latin languages do their own variations, but there is a definite underlying English flavor because of the roots (ARPANET). I'm not saying there isn't plenty of non-English content out there (altogether non-English content may outnumber English content, depending on how one makes the comparison). What I am saying is that English works very well as the lcd of Internet and world business, similar to U.S. currency in international business transactions. And English is expanding at an unprecedented rate yet still retaining its functionality. It will all meld together naturally (if allowed to) in the future as time goes on, but I believe English will form the basis and blueprint for that future International language with the better parts of other written forms becoming part of the conversation. That's why GUI's are great -- they communicate ideas without a specified language instead through purer, more abstract images. The common image library of communication is developing underfoot. (Hey, I had to post, my karma was depleting for lack of use -- was out of town for about a week.) I wonder when the language police will come knocking at my door (or last port)?
So somehow forcing a cost onto emails sent telemarketing style (spammage), might work.
How about a cost the people control?
All commercial email must pay a two cent send cost. Then, to make it work, the receiver will have the power to say "I accept this email" (after they've read it) and by saying so the cost will be cancelled out (as though it had never existed).
Who collects the cost when emails are not accepted? The people who receive the unsolicited or unwanted email get all proceeds.
This could be enacted by law, but if somehow it didn't require government that would be better. Anything tariff-like would attract big government. Don't want any new taxes.
The cost may need to be higher, though. The 'junk' mail sent through the U.S. post has relatively high cost, but that doesn't seem to stop it from coming.
Companies who use the goodwill and other benefits of the GPL need to be self-policing. Be does a pretty good job, but some things were missing. By publicizing this, Bruce Perens has provided incentive to other companies to make sure to follow their own license. GPL violations can usually be easily fixed, but any company using the GPL is in the best position to find its own violations. The public does not have time to audit each and every business, so publicizing GPL violations when they occur should lead to better adherence by all. Harsh to Be but better for all. And Be should come out a winner, too. The next article on/. (on this topic) will be about how Be responded in a timely manner and fixed its gpl problems.
The first paragraph of the Bruce Perens' article sums it up:
Be has already contacted me and promised to fix this problem. But I'd like people to be aware of it because it points out what can go wrong when you use other people's software without checking the licenses.
Plus this clip from the last paragraph:
...but you don't want to get your company in this position unnecessarily. Be is going to be a lot more careful about this now, and your company should, too...
Slashdot Mirror
1. Oxford was not being sued over it. Oxford received a standard cease-and-desist letter.
2. Students do pay for access. It's this little-known fee called tuition.
3. As it is, Oxford has a hell of a lot of money.
4. The page contained no copyright violating material. The content of the page was a parody of the whole DeCSS battle. Parody is a protected form of speech. Since the parody used entirely new material in order to create a Cascading Style Sheet filter, the parody protection (of fair use against copyright violation accusations) is not even necessary. Anyone can use the name DeCSS to refer to anything they wish. It is not a trademark. A claim of copyright infringemnet against the page is completely without merit, obvious to anyone who spent even half a minute reading the page. The page in question contained all new material authored by the student (until it was removed without due process from a false accusation).
5. Oxford did not do the right thing.
Go Video has the entire patent rights to dual-deck VCRs. They charge exhorbitant amounts for one of their machines -- the price is on par with buying two separate VCRs. In this manner, no copyright cartel has impetus to go after them, because anyone can buy two separate VCRs and do the same thing at the same price.
I'm guessing Amstrad violated Go Video's patents and that is why they went out of business.
You've taken my heady idealism a little too seriously. The goal of alchemy was to turn base metal into gold. That is not a possible chemical reaction. Neither is air + water = elect. Both are pipe dreams. And I freely admit that. Still, the realm of the impossible provides exellent fodder for the imagination, and does not necessarily make me a troll.
So, false advertising, eh? Will the FTC handle slapping HP a penalty or will a class action lawsuit be necessary?
If you look here it appears that 12-bit color is not that much worse than 16-bit. Still, 65,536 colors does beat 4,096 colors. I wonder how much difference it makes on a small handheld screen anyway?
The spec page now says it's a "240 x 320 pixels LCD rich color display".
If it's a one-for-one translation (and you buy Microsoft's we-copyrighted-kerberos stance), copyright will still apply to the end result.
We do have salvation.
Go here.
Some kind soul has reversed-engineered Microsoft's embraced-extended-extinguished version of kerberos. A full working version can be found at the above link. Please, spread the meme (for a month or two). Then don't worry about it, cause who really wants to help Microsoft conform to standards.
They don't want to play fair, and that's why they're being broken up. Once the monopoly is gone, the necessity to ensure Microsoft conforms to standards will no longer exist (market forces will take up the slack). I love a free market economy, especially when anti-competitive monopolists are put into check.
The lead-acid battery is on the way out. It doesn't work all that well, takes up a lot of room, weighs a ton, and royally screws the environment.
I really dig the advanced flywheel and carbon nanotube stuff. But wouldn't it be even better if no batteries were necesary? We have lots and lots of water and we have lots and lots of air. It would be really cool to develop a mechanism to generate electricity using H20 and the chemical compunds found in air (Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Oxygen, etc.) on the spot. Fuel cells are becoming better and better. An Air/Water Cell is the next logical step.
A machine which converted water and air to electricity sounds much like the goal of alchemy. It is a pipe dream. Yes. But e- wants to be free.
Once external energy becomes freely available to everyone anywhere, all manners of political change would follow, not least which would be more free software.
I'm going to reproduce an AC's post found here because it seems very relevant to the copyright issue.
/. apply the precedent to your present case.
There is an interesting precedent on what happens when copyright and first-amendment collide. Some decades ago, the Soviets published a badly bawdlerized version of a dissident's book that had become widely acclaimed in hand-copied "samizdat" editions. When the original was smuggled to the West and published here, the Soviet "publisher" sued for violation of copyright. The court, in throwing out the lawsuit, reasoned that copyright law was being used to stifle a protected political debate: about Communist _praxis_ then, about Microsoft's extend-to-destroy strategy now.
The core of the court's reasoning was based on the original purpose of each clause. When two constitutonal provisions collide, the one that is being used for its original constitutional purpose prevails. The purpose of copyrights was to promote the dissemination of knowledge, by giving a financial incentive to writing and publication. This is the central purpose that must be protected. Other uses of copyright, such as trying to halt the spread of of information that might harm the political interests of the copyright owner, enjoy a lower level of protection, particularly when they act against the original purpose of copyright, and hinder, rather than promote, the dissemination of ideas. Similarly, the original purpose of free speech guarantees was to promote unhindered debate of political issues. Other uses of the 1st amendment's guarantee of free expression - for example, the provision of pornography to masturbators - enjoy less protection. Such secondary uses of the free-spech guarantee may have to give way when they are in conflict wih the central purpose of some other constitutional provision.
In the case that set the precedent - just like the case now - the 1st amendment case involved publication of material going to the heart of a public political controversy, the exact purpose for which the 1st amendment was written into our constituton. As for copyright, it was being used then - just like now - directly _against_ the original constitutional purpose. The Soviets then, and Microsoft now, have tried to use copyright to hinder, rather than promote, the dissemination of knowledge. I hope that the above will help
The above is a very reasonable argument for why Slashdot should not have to censor the offendings posts.
For those who want a copyright-free interpretation of Microsoft's kerberos implementation, try
http://www.thetop.net/kerbos/spec.txt.
I understand that everything Corel touches turns to sh-- lately. (I've read this many different place. Of course, just cause people say it doesn't mean it's true.)
There is a clear counterexample though: Linux. Corel has been very supportive of Linux. And the prospects for Linux lie well beyond 2001. Corel may have a future after all. It could be very bright.
Does anyone know how their seamless Windows apps on Linux integration is going?
My question: How can we get NSI out of the role of running the registry database?
Well, looked it up and it won't be long depending on a couple of things:
23. Expiration of this Agreement. The Expiration Date shall be four years after the Effective Date, unless extended as provided below. In the event that NSI completes the legal separation of ownership of its Registry Services business from its registrar business by divesting all the assets and operations of one of those businesses within 18 months after Effective Date to an unaffiliated third party that enters an agreement enforceable by ICANN and the Department of Commerce (i) not to be both a registry and a registrar in the Registry TLDs, and (ii) not to control, own or have as an affiliate any individual(s) or entity(ies) that, collectively, act as both a registry and a registrar in the Registry TLDs, the Expiration Date shall be extended for an additional four years, resulting in a total term of eight years. For the purposes of this Section, "unaffiliated third party" means any entity in which NSI (including its successors and assigns, subsidiaries and divisions, and their respective directors, officers, employees, agents and representatives) does not have majority equity ownership or the ability to exercise managerial or operational control, either directly or indirectly through one or more intermediaries. "Control," as used in this Section 23, means any of the following: (1) ownership, directly or indirectly, or other interest entitling NSI to exercise in the aggregate 25% or more of the voting power of an entity; (2) the power, directly or indirectly, to elect 25% or more of the board of directors (or equivalent governing body) of an entity; or (3) the ability, directly or indirectly, to direct or cause the direction of the management, operations, or policies of an entity.
There is a great post on the copyright issue here. It explains how free speech rights overcome Microsoft's specious copyright argument. It even uses a legal precedent from Soviet-era U.S. politics.
And, there is an interpretation of the Microsoft kerberos specification here -- does not use any material on which Microsoft can claim copyright, much like DeCSS. This is the version people should link to and post around the web. Very nice.
Slashdot has no duty to take down the 'offending' posts. Did you even take the time to read them? Only one of the posts MS refers to even contains the Kerberos stuff. The remainder are links to off-site locations or written descriptions of how to download the kerberos information from Microsoft's own site without being forced to agree to give up your rights. A few of the posts are mere criticisms of Microsoft's policies (and nothing more). So, in fact, there is only a single offending post.
Slashdot could be pursued under regular copyright law for this one post (even though it is very arguable that the AC owns the post and thus is responsible).
Unfortunately, Microsoft is currently pursuing Slashdot using the DCMA. The DCMA is inherently unconstitutional. Therefore, Slashdot has a duty not to remove the post. Instead Slashdot must stand up to Microsoft's corporate bullying and Microsoft's attempts to extinguish a previously open security standard. We must not allow Microsoft to destroy kerberos. That is our duty.
If you or anyone else does not want to be a part of this fight, that is fine. But don't go around spreading misinformation. Slashdot is not going to be shut down over this. If anything, Slashdot will become stronger as a result.
Yes, but Microsoft is doing it with what is suppose to be an open standard by leveraging copyright & 'trade secret' law to its own embraced & extended version. MS has no patent.
It is really disgraceful the way Microsoft parades around doing stuff like this while its anti-trust trial is underway.
It's nice to have voice and data over the same line, but with DSL you have to pay separately for each. DSL will run you $50-70 a month (residential) and then the voice connection is another $20 plus. With the IP phone, all you need is the data connection (DSL). No extra phone charges! (And the satisfaction of knowing you aren't supporting one of the regional monopoly local telcos.)
Also, you can probably add more IP phones (each with a separate number) to the data connection for no extra charge. Effectively you get multiple phone lines for free.
I like it.
IANAL, but a law school student told me about a classic case involving a sculpter who sculpted a statue while working under contract. Later, he made some more of the statues separately and sold them to whomever. The original group which contracted him sued and the case went up to the Supreme Court where the sculpter's copyright rights were upheld. (I'm not sure what the legal arguments were.) So, apparently, there is legal precedent for a (sub)contractor claiming copyright on his work, but this is ridiculous. Should be an interesting test case to see if a court can understand HTML. (My take: company X loses.)
From the website: Works with over 300 games (and growing!).
You can also try Virtual Game Station which does about 200 games plus some PAL games (the Mac version does a lot more, but it came out almost a year ago).
I AGREE, OOG. Will BLOW SOME KARMA to SHOW MY SUPPORT. I also do not think OOG is a troll. (An all bold filter would be much more useful.) Caps are like yelling, but THEY ARE NOT. They are caps. Easily moderated down if the content is not liked. I can understand the 70 second rule, but this is ridiculous. I've recommended this before, but a fractional point system where each moderator gets about 25 one-fifth Troll points to apply would solve much of Trolling. Five people with moderation would have to agree a post is a Troll. Then it would get moderated down 1 point. Easy cake. Filtering of what gets posted is simple censorship. I thought that was what moderation was suppose to avoid -- censorship. :(
The problem is that Network Solutions was (and still is) a private (only) for-profit company. They sought to relax all the requirements between org, com, & net tld's and then *sold* as many of them as they could. Instead of the domain naming system acting to help people find or create things on the Internet, we have the majority of domain names going unused, having been secured by individuals and companies hoping to profit just as NSI did with their original sale. (And NSI gets yearly rent.) It is very unfortunate that the company put in charge of domain name registration many years ago was a profit-driven company. Somebody pocketed a lot of money for that to have happended.
It has been a little over a year ago since registrar competition was introduced. But it is much too late to fix this system. The whole thing should be scrapped and new domains should be given out much like vanity license plates -- you can't sell yours to another: if you don't want it or use it, it goes back to the state to be reused. And NSI should have nothing to do with it.
That is a very good point.
Make sure Intel replaces your whole motherboard or else you will be stuck having to buy the 6-8 times more expensive RAMBUS memory when you upgrade later.
It is almost as though Intel planned this so that RAMBUS will get some guaranteed sales early on. Then Intel and RAMBUS can get together and issue a press release detailing the huge initial adoption by consumers of RAMBUS memory over regular memory (without mentioning that the surge is an artificial byproduct of Intel's defective motherboards).
Some other links (also at C|net):
Intel launches expensive recall due to chip glitch
Rambus at the root of Intel's memory troubles
Number 2 is probably exactly what they are shooting for. By having the design public, they can say to the courts: 'yes, obviously, our competitor just looked at our design -- which by the way is public -- and copied it.'
What I'm hoping, though, is that peer-review will reveal that Intel has infringed other people's patents in the Itanium design. That would be a nice unintended side-effect since Intel likes to sue everyone else all the time over chip designs.
The press release from McAfee's site estimates damages of $2.61 Billion as of yesterday from the ILoveYou bug.
e s/pr_template.asp?PR=/PressMedia/0505200 0.asp&Sel=751
http://www.nai.com/asp_set/about_nai/press/releas
Someone wanna send an email to CmdrTaco so he can update the table? (Of course, billions are made up of millions -- not much concern to Ballmer.)
I like English. Everyone uses it on the net (cause the URL/tld name system is based on it). Other latin languages do their own variations, but there is a definite underlying English flavor because of the roots (ARPANET). I'm not saying there isn't plenty of non-English content out there (altogether non-English content may outnumber English content, depending on how one makes the comparison). What I am saying is that English works very well as the lcd of Internet and world business, similar to U.S. currency in international business transactions. And English is expanding at an unprecedented rate yet still retaining its functionality. It will all meld together naturally (if allowed to) in the future as time goes on, but I believe English will form the basis and blueprint for that future International language with the better parts of other written forms becoming part of the conversation. That's why GUI's are great -- they communicate ideas without a specified language instead through purer, more abstract images. The common image library of communication is developing underfoot. (Hey, I had to post, my karma was depleting for lack of use -- was out of town for about a week.) I wonder when the language police will come knocking at my door (or last port)?
Lol! Thanks for some much needed comic relief. Sorry about all the people who don't get it.
I followed http://localhost which Netscape turned into http://www.localhost.com/.
Eventually, after reading about localhost's anti-spam lawsuit, I got to a nice resource about what to do if you have received spam:
http://www.spamfree.org/victims/
So somehow forcing a cost onto emails sent telemarketing style (spammage), might work.
How about a cost the people control?
All commercial email must pay a two cent send cost. Then, to make it work, the receiver will have the power to say "I accept this email" (after they've read it) and by saying so the cost will be cancelled out (as though it had never existed).
Who collects the cost when emails are not accepted? The people who receive the unsolicited or unwanted email get all proceeds.
This could be enacted by law, but if somehow it didn't require government that would be better. Anything tariff-like would attract big government. Don't want any new taxes.
The cost may need to be higher, though. The 'junk' mail sent through the U.S. post has relatively high cost, but that doesn't seem to stop it from coming.
Companies who use the goodwill and other benefits of the GPL need to be self-policing. Be does a pretty good job, but some things were missing. By publicizing this, Bruce Perens has provided incentive to other companies to make sure to follow their own license. GPL violations can usually be easily fixed, but any company using the GPL is in the best position to find its own violations. The public does not have time to audit each and every business, so publicizing GPL violations when they occur should lead to better adherence by all. Harsh to Be but better for all. And Be should come out a winner, too. The next article on /. (on this topic) will be about how Be responded in a timely manner and fixed its gpl problems.
...but you don't want to get your company in this position unnecessarily. Be is going to be a lot more careful about this now, and your company should, too...
The first paragraph of the Bruce Perens' article sums it up:
Be has already contacted me and promised to fix this problem. But I'd like people to be aware of it because it points out what can go wrong when you use other people's software without checking the licenses.
Plus this clip from the last paragraph: