I agree with your point, but not your example. "Piracy" would occur if someone illegally redistributed the TiVo code. If you were unauthorized to connect and download the upgrade, it might be considered unauthorized access of computer resources ("hacking"). But since the TiVo was automatically authorized by the TiVo folks to get the upgrade, they can hardly say they didn't want it to happen and come after you for it.
It's just like deep linking - if you don't want me to get information from you, don't give it to me. You can't freely give me things when I ask, and then complain that I was somehow unauthorized to have them.
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In a certain sense, the school may be committing a crime by destroying evidence - they could have only kept the parts that made him look culpable and erased the rest. Why is it when some hacker gets arrested, the FBI or the police keep his machines for years, but the University in this case gets to copy off all of the data, erase the disks (sounds like a coverup to me) and put the machine back in service? If I were this guy's lawyer I know that I would try to get anything transferred off of the original media disbarred in court - you never know who's tampered with it at that point.
On the plus side, the school's ham-handedness may end up keeping the guy out of real trouble.
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It sounds to me like Felten et al. are trying to get a judgment up front that they won't be violating the law, so that they can go ahead with the presentation without fear of legal action. I'm not sure what the legal standing of this sort of action is, though.
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If there was a real free market, then it would be possible to gain market share on Microsoft without essentially giving your product away for free. The fact that Linux is the only OS making headway is proof that the PC OS market is essentially devoid of competition.
A free market maybe isn't the right term, since as you point out the opposite of free is government control. Maybe "competitive market" would be more accurate - then not only are you free to use Microsoft, free software, or any other products you can find, but since the market is competitive those other commercial alternatives actually exist. A market with exactly one commercial competitor may be a "free" market but it is not a "competitive" one.
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Based on Microsoft's past actions, the current level of standards support in IE is there to gain market share. Once they have captured enough of the market, they will begin making their own standards in order to prevent anyone else from competing. It's a means to an end, it's not really because they're serious about standards in a meaningful way.
And besides, this broken up market share hasn't been good for the public either. It is almost necessary to have
multiple browsers on your computer in order to visit all of the sites that you might happen across, if only for the
latest plugins that might not have been developed for your browser of choice.
Speaking as someone who was recently using Netscape 4.x on HP-UX, there's really nothing on any of those sites that you can't get along without. Now that I have access to Netscape on Solaris and Linux, which do have somewhat more plugin support, I still don't use them because I've learned the hard way that that sort of thing doesn't really add any value to my web experience. If web sites don't work for me, I go elsewhere - there are usually plenty of other places to find what I'm looking for.
Not that it wouldn't be nice if all web browsers could work together with all sites correctly, I just don't think it's a crippling problem if they don't.
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There is no need for something to be
false for it to be defamatory.
...but on the other hand, I don't see how publishing or saying something which isn't true could be actionable, even if it does damage your character or reputation. The truth hurts, deal with it.
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They aren't really mutually exclusive, though - just because someone writes a scurrilious pamphlet in which they claim that my ethnic group all have tails and pick nits all day long, doesn't deny me my freedom, my rights, or my dignity. Dignity comes from within, and my freedom and rights (in the practical sense) are limited to what my society as a whole will permit, rather than what the most narrow-minded bigots would prefer.
Sorry, but freedom of speech is more important than someone's hurt feelings. If you don't like what someone says about you, the solution is more speech - publish exactly why they're wrong about you, and then go out and prove it.
If you don't like the way someone thinks, then please go stick your head in a pig:)
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Not that I necessarily support the FCC on this, but I have to point out that this isn't a new policy of the Bush administration. I used to listen to a morning radio show that practically had a direct debit to the FCC for their weekly fines. At least so far the FCC's actions are no worse than they were under the previous administration. And hey, you never know - Joe Liebermann could have been worse.
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Of course, now you have the problem that if it's cheaper to pay the occasional settlement than to force its workers to wear hairnets, there's no impetus for McBurgerJoint's to change their operations. Not that the U.S. system is that great either, it's just different. It seems to me that punitive damages should actually be higher in some cases, or at least scaled to the size of the company - McDonald's probably doesn't even notice paying out millions in a settlement.
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No, of course not. Why would anyone ever think that of Microsoft? I can't imagine ever having any issues with Microsoft's standards support - the very idea is unthinkable.
After all, you have to embrace the standard before you can extend it in non-standard ways, you know.
Heaven is when one browser has 100% of the market share, works cross-platform, and could bring newer, more
modern, and more useful features to the public.
Don't confuse what makes your job easier with what's better for the public - look how nice it's been when almost everyone uses one broken email client, after all. Anyone having 100% market share is always bad in theory, and almost always bad in practice. If there's anyone I would trust to have 100% share of a market, it's not Microsoft.
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This is not new, though, and in fact probably more speech receives First Amendment protection now than it did 200 years ago. Back then you wouldn't have seen courts upholding the rights of unpopular groups to demonstrate, the right to unpopular forms of protest like burning draft cards and flags, etc. I agree that some things are less free than they were (for economic, social, and political reasons), but speech doesn't seem to me to be one of them.
Now all we need is an amendment prohibiting frivolous anti-flag-burning amendments, and we'd be all set on the free speech front:)
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Heck, if you could tell what the stock market was going to do that far in the future, why not just predict it about a year in advance and make a killing? Unless that stardate really is next year...
(posted w/o a shred of sarcasm because it took me three reading to realize you meant Day-Of-Week.)
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I'm more curious about how it will affect the whole 'net if the company running one of the root servers goes bankrupt - do they have a contingency plan for someone else to take up the slack?
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It has less to do with the rebellion level and more to do with how long it takes the pages to load, and how annoying they are once they've loaded. Google.com is still the best interface to the google search engine.
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In listening to the interview, it occurred to me that RMS and ESR have probably done this sort of combined interview enough times that they probably know the other guy's answers by heart at this point. For their next combined interview, they should switch and argue the other's position:)
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I dunno - if repressed angst does it for you, you can hardly beat Ira Glass. He's so laid back he's almost comatose, yet at the same time oddly intense. There's an almost physical urge to jump down the radio and yank the next sentence fragment out of him. That may be the big attraction of This American Life - it's not the stories, it's how they're told.
My personal favorite, however, is Fiona Richie (host of The Thistle and Shamrock, an Irish music show). There's nothing like an accent on a woman you've never seen to make her sound incredibly desirable. I may even name my first-born daughter Fiona in her honor.
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Well, by the same token you don't really have an expectation of privacy when using an unencrypted cell phone on the public airwaves, but you can still get in trouble for scanning them anyway. We just need our already wacky laws to catch up to the Internet...
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If it's on their soil, it's their responsibility. If they don't live up to
what you think their responsibility is, the only thing you're allowed to do is to complain. No nuking,
no computer intrusions, no covert police actions.
I totally agree, and in fact it's even worse - if you're committing "police actions" on the soil of another nation, you're really breaching that nation's sovereignty - in a certain sense this is an act of war. Which makes sense, because the only way you can really be assured of enforcing certain laws in a place which doesn't acknowledge them is to effectively take control of the application of law in that area.
In the end this is just the ugliest of a long line of ugly-Americanisms (and I speak as a U.S. citizen myself). Maybe if we weren't so damn arrogant half the time, the rest of the world would have a little more respect for the other half of the time when the U.S. gets preachy. Talk about your bipolar disorders:)
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You can modify it all you want, but you probably can't redistribute your modifications. You can bet that Microsoft doesn't let people distribute improved versions of Windows when they let other companies see the source code. And in the long run modifying just your local copy of the code doesn't buy you very much, since you would have to merge up every time the principal distributor releases an update.
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Slashdot Mirror
I agree with your point, but not your example. "Piracy" would occur if someone illegally redistributed the TiVo code. If you were unauthorized to connect and download the upgrade, it might be considered unauthorized access of computer resources ("hacking"). But since the TiVo was automatically authorized by the TiVo folks to get the upgrade, they can hardly say they didn't want it to happen and come after you for it.
It's just like deep linking - if you don't want me to get information from you, don't give it to me. You can't freely give me things when I ask, and then complain that I was somehow unauthorized to have them.
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In a certain sense, the school may be committing a crime by destroying evidence - they could have only kept the parts that made him look culpable and erased the rest. Why is it when some hacker gets arrested, the FBI or the police keep his machines for years, but the University in this case gets to copy off all of the data, erase the disks (sounds like a coverup to me) and put the machine back in service? If I were this guy's lawyer I know that I would try to get anything transferred off of the original media disbarred in court - you never know who's tampered with it at that point.
On the plus side, the school's ham-handedness may end up keeping the guy out of real trouble.
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It sounds to me like Felten et al. are trying to get a judgment up front that they won't be violating the law, so that they can go ahead with the presentation without fear of legal action. I'm not sure what the legal standing of this sort of action is, though.
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I don't know, he hasn't really had a hit since She Blinded Me with Science, has he?
Science!
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If there was a real free market, then it would be possible to gain market share on Microsoft without essentially giving your product away for free. The fact that Linux is the only OS making headway is proof that the PC OS market is essentially devoid of competition.
A free market maybe isn't the right term, since as you point out the opposite of free is government control. Maybe "competitive market" would be more accurate - then not only are you free to use Microsoft, free software, or any other products you can find, but since the market is competitive those other commercial alternatives actually exist. A market with exactly one commercial competitor may be a "free" market but it is not a "competitive" one.
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Based on Microsoft's past actions, the current level of standards support in IE is there to gain market share. Once they have captured enough of the market, they will begin making their own standards in order to prevent anyone else from competing. It's a means to an end, it's not really because they're serious about standards in a meaningful way.
Speaking as someone who was recently using Netscape 4.x on HP-UX, there's really nothing on any of those sites that you can't get along without. Now that I have access to Netscape on Solaris and Linux, which do have somewhat more plugin support, I still don't use them because I've learned the hard way that that sort of thing doesn't really add any value to my web experience. If web sites don't work for me, I go elsewhere - there are usually plenty of other places to find what I'm looking for.
Not that it wouldn't be nice if all web browsers could work together with all sites correctly, I just don't think it's a crippling problem if they don't.
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...but on the other hand, I don't see how publishing or saying something which isn't true could be actionable, even if it does damage your character or reputation. The truth hurts, deal with it.
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They aren't really mutually exclusive, though - just because someone writes a scurrilious pamphlet in which they claim that my ethnic group all have tails and pick nits all day long, doesn't deny me my freedom, my rights, or my dignity. Dignity comes from within, and my freedom and rights (in the practical sense) are limited to what my society as a whole will permit, rather than what the most narrow-minded bigots would prefer.
Sorry, but freedom of speech is more important than someone's hurt feelings. If you don't like what someone says about you, the solution is more speech - publish exactly why they're wrong about you, and then go out and prove it.
If you don't like the way someone thinks, then please go stick your head in a pig :)
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Not that I necessarily support the FCC on this, but I have to point out that this isn't a new policy of the Bush administration. I used to listen to a morning radio show that practically had a direct debit to the FCC for their weekly fines. At least so far the FCC's actions are no worse than they were under the previous administration. And hey, you never know - Joe Liebermann could have been worse.
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Of course, now you have the problem that if it's cheaper to pay the occasional settlement than to force its workers to wear hairnets, there's no impetus for McBurgerJoint's to change their operations. Not that the U.S. system is that great either, it's just different. It seems to me that punitive damages should actually be higher in some cases, or at least scaled to the size of the company - McDonald's probably doesn't even notice paying out millions in a settlement.
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No, of course not. Why would anyone ever think that of Microsoft? I can't imagine ever having any issues with Microsoft's standards support - the very idea is unthinkable. After all, you have to embrace the standard before you can extend it in non-standard ways, you know.
Don't confuse what makes your job easier with what's better for the public - look how nice it's been when almost everyone uses one broken email client, after all. Anyone having 100% market share is always bad in theory, and almost always bad in practice. If there's anyone I would trust to have 100% share of a market, it's not Microsoft.
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Wow, how the times have changed... :)
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This is not new, though, and in fact probably more speech receives First Amendment protection now than it did 200 years ago. Back then you wouldn't have seen courts upholding the rights of unpopular groups to demonstrate, the right to unpopular forms of protest like burning draft cards and flags, etc. I agree that some things are less free than they were (for economic, social, and political reasons), but speech doesn't seem to me to be one of them.
Now all we need is an amendment prohibiting frivolous anti-flag-burning amendments, and we'd be all set on the free speech front :)
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Heck, if you could tell what the stock market was going to do that far in the future, why not just predict it about a year in advance and make a killing? Unless that stardate really is next year...
(posted w/o a shred of sarcasm because it took me three reading to realize you meant Day-Of-Week.)
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I'm more curious about how it will affect the whole 'net if the company running one of the root servers goes bankrupt - do they have a contingency plan for someone else to take up the slack?
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You realize that that pre-installed OS isn't actually free, right? [/nitpick]
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It has less to do with the rebellion level and more to do with how long it takes the pages to load, and how annoying they are once they've loaded. Google.com is still the best interface to the google search engine.
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In listening to the interview, it occurred to me that RMS and ESR have probably done this sort of combined interview enough times that they probably know the other guy's answers by heart at this point. For their next combined interview, they should switch and argue the other's position :)
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Oh wait, that's another song :)
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I dunno - if repressed angst does it for you, you can hardly beat Ira Glass. He's so laid back he's almost comatose, yet at the same time oddly intense. There's an almost physical urge to jump down the radio and yank the next sentence fragment out of him. That may be the big attraction of This American Life - it's not the stories, it's how they're told.
My personal favorite, however, is Fiona Richie (host of The Thistle and Shamrock, an Irish music show). There's nothing like an accent on a woman you've never seen to make her sound incredibly desirable. I may even name my first-born daughter Fiona in her honor.
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[Tom]: ...and remember, don't hack like my brother.
[Ray]: Don't hack like my brother!
(hilarity ensues)
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Well, by the same token you don't really have an expectation of privacy when using an unencrypted cell phone on the public airwaves, but you can still get in trouble for scanning them anyway. We just need our already wacky laws to catch up to the Internet...
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I totally agree, and in fact it's even worse - if you're committing "police actions" on the soil of another nation, you're really breaching that nation's sovereignty - in a certain sense this is an act of war. Which makes sense, because the only way you can really be assured of enforcing certain laws in a place which doesn't acknowledge them is to effectively take control of the application of law in that area.
In the end this is just the ugliest of a long line of ugly-Americanisms (and I speak as a U.S. citizen myself). Maybe if we weren't so damn arrogant half the time, the rest of the world would have a little more respect for the other half of the time when the U.S. gets preachy. Talk about your bipolar disorders :)
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You can modify it all you want, but you probably can't redistribute your modifications. You can bet that Microsoft doesn't let people distribute improved versions of Windows when they let other companies see the source code. And in the long run modifying just your local copy of the code doesn't buy you very much, since you would have to merge up every time the principal distributor releases an update.
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He's a principled guy that also has to pay the bills? I don't know, it is an interesting juxtaposition.
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