Under the DMCA, you should be able to submit a written affidavit that you are not infringing, and your ISP is supposed to put you back online immediately. The onus is then on the accuser to take you to court.
How well this works in practice, I don't know. Apparently it worked for some Napster users, though.
True, but on the other hand my body never talked me into picking it on the basis of its reliability, ease of use, and available applications. I was just stuck with it, when really I would have preferred to look like Harrison Bergeron:)
I'm just pointing out that the Secure Audio Path technology isn't a software bug, it's a specific design and implementation with the express purpose of hobbling the use of the tool, even though the tool is sold on the basis of how useful it is. It's one thing to just not have a feature; it's something entirely else to remove a feature that users expect and have been able to use in the past.
Not that I'm too worried - either someone will hack around it, or users will just not upgrade once word gets out. There's no way the millions of college kids will give up their mp3s now, no matter what they have to do.
Not only is there a great amount of debate in the scientific
community... but the evidence points squarely away from evolution in practically
every instance.
I would dispute that claim - you can't say that in almost every instance the evidence is against the theory of evolution, and then just provide one example as if that proves it. If there really was more proof against evolution, don't you think the scientific community (the majority of which are smart enough to know that they couldn't avoid evidence that overwhelming) would stop supporting the theory of evolution? I refuse to believe that the worldwide scientific community is maintaining a sham theory just because they like it better somehow.
Sorry, but the theory of evolution is the current explanation that makes the most sense based on current evidence. It is much more likely that proto-turtles didn't have hard shells, and happened to mutate into real turtles fairly quickly, than it is that the entire theory of evolution is incorrect. Sure, there's stuff that isn't adequately explained at present, but evolution remains the best theory for explaining things on the basis of current evidence.
Wow, isn't that just what I need: an OS specifically designed to thwart me. Isn't Windows difficult enough to deal with as it is, without being deliberately hostile to the user's wishes? How can Microsoft justify releasing software specifically designed to hold the user back?
This is exactly the kind of innovation that I hope the open source movement will bury.
Cool, I didn't know that. Although I don't know how much GPL'd code out there is actually registered for copyright. Does the FSF do this for any code that's assigned to them? I bet 99% of the random projects on sourceforge haven't been through this step.
I also think that it could well be argued that the license is prejudicial against commercial software
developers with malicious intent. The FSF propaganda supports this ("It's exhilarating standing up
to an evil empire." anyone?). This might be enough to break the GPL legally.
But there are plenty of bad, even malicious contracts out in the world of business, surely that doesn't invalidate them? A contract doesn't have to be fair, it just has to be agreed to. Commercial software developers can use GPL'd code or not, depending on whether they agree with the license terms. It's no different from licensing QNX, etc. - you have fixed obligations under your license, and if the terms place you at a disadvantage, well then you shouldn't have agreed.
Then there's the question of whether a lawsuit against a GPL violator could actually be awarded
damages. The copyright holder is not using his copyright to secure a profit for himself, and it's
damage to just such a profit that's supposed to be reimbursed in a copyright suit; you're not supposed
to be awarded damages just because you don't like the way the violator makes his living. The courts
might very well toss out all cases as frivolous.
But this works for video game publishers all the time - people who violate the copyrights on old games are still prosecuted, whether or not the game publisher is still making a profit on the game or even offering the game for sale at all. Copyright enforcement itself isn't scaled by the financial magnitude of the violation, although I admit that normally damage awards are. I don't think you could sue anyone for compensatory damages for violating the GPL, but you could probably force them to stop violating and possibly get punitive damages.
It's true that the GPL has iffy parts. The one that makes me the most nervous is the idea that a contract may not be valid without "consideration" changing hands - one would then have to prove that the hope of receiving future software enhancements from the parties receiving the GPL'd code is equivalent to "consideration". But I don't see the points which you've raised as particularly questionable.
Oh no! I'm being mocked by ZDNet! And we all know how much their opinions matter!!! Now I can never show my face again...wipes tear...;)
But seriously, this is neat technology and it's news to some people. You don't get all cranky when the 10:00 TV news runs a story that you saw on CNN at noon, do you?/. doesn't always have the scoop, but they generate a lot of commentary about what they do post, and that's really what I read it for. And if you're not smart enough to figure out that cool new technology (which is presented in a positive light because it's damn cool) often has serious bugs, then maybe you should stick to reading ZDNet rather than slashdot.
I'll agree that there has been some less-than-responsible journalism on/., but then again I don't think you can necessarily hold up ZDNet as the bastion of responsible reporting either./. gets it wrong some times, but you know what? Within 10 minutes of the story going up, if the editor or the submitter was on crack, someone will point out that fact. And/. is much more likely to print a front-page retraction than ZDNet.
Yeah, heaven forbid indeed. She should wait until she's at least 45 and fairly curmudgeonly before venturing into experiments in social science. We don't want the next generation to get any ideas about questioning the status quo, do we?
I mean, come on! I would be proud to have a daughter asking the tough questions at an early age - more power to her! That's an admirable trait in anyone, and if people are uncomfortable when someone questions these issues, then perhaps the problem lies with those who are made uncomfortable. Why can't kids talk about race, anyway? Adults obviously can't come to grips with it, so nobody else is allowed to try?
Well, how many different varieties of white Barbie versus black Barbie are there? (I'm really asking, I have no idea). The experiment was about people's reaction to the dolls, not the dolls themselves. That's why you hold the dolls constant and sample a number of people for their reactions.
More than 30 people would be a good sample, but I'm not sure I would have realized the importance of sample size when I was 9 either.
Unfortunately, the two parties have warped state electoral laws enough to destroy any advantage that the electoral college might have provided. Electors are no longer statesmen or even really representatives in other than the technical sense; they're just party hacks who are picked for their extreme unwillingness to actually think about whom they're electing President.
We might as well go with straight popular vote counts or even instant runoff - at least that way the eventual winner could truly say that they have a mandate from a plurality of the country.
Good point - what we really need now is the right to reverse-engineer and the right to strong encryption.
Although I agree with the right to bear arms, I have to point out that the amount of firepower in the hands of private citizens isn't necessarily the determining factor in winning a resistance to a corrupt U.S. government - the citizens of Vietnam did wonders with much simpler equipment, for example. Of course you're going to lose against tanks if you make a stand from an armed compound; but the U.S. government doesn't have a large enough standing army to withstand a widespread guerrilla movement which has popular support. I'm not sure that any size of standing army could effectively control the U.S. against a unified, unhappy populace, but then again it seems to work in China.
Not that I'm fomenting a revolution, but I see how it could be done. As did Thomas Jefferson, etc.
Well, but that matches up perfectly with the whole censorship thing, doesn't it? According to you, it's OK to give up rights if that's what the majority wants. And if you're in the minority but have legitimate reasons for holding a different viewpoint, you're out of luck.
This is exactly why you need a strong federal Constitution, to protect the rights of the minority against the depredations of the mob. Because let's face it - the great masses and their representatives are going to vote for the easy way out every time, rather than face the real responsibilities of citizenship in a representative government.
I'm just sorry for the Australians who are fully cognizant of their natural rights to defend themselves but have had their rights trampled on by the majority. Don't look now, but the next set of rights to strip away might be the ones that you find important.
Actually, I think if you'll read the American Bill of Rights, you'll see that it's the second amendment which preserves the right to bear arms. The first amendment is the freedom of speech (you know, that other thing people don't have in Australia, according to this article:)
The incidence of people being shot during traffic altercations in the U.S. must be over-reported overseas; most guns around here are accidentally used by the owner's children to shoot each other instead (tongue very firmly in cheek).
If they just wanted to use the patent defensively, they could have just published the technology unpatented. At that point it's prior art which they can use as a defense against claims of infringement, but it doesn't prevent anyone else from using it. That would be the ethical thing to do.
True,/usr is a little over the top. Best would be/usr/gnome and then symlinks from/usr/bin, etc. Or/usr/local - a good option for a package manager would be to remember "do new rpms/debs go into/usr or/usr/local", because some people want all new stuff in local, but other people only want hand-compiled (possibly tweaked) stuff stored in/usr/local.
Wow, that was just what I found annoying about the KDE 2 install, since I didn't already have/opt and it didn't pop up any dialogs to let me know that it was installing all of this stuff on the / partition, so it filled up that partition (which I only allocated to be large enough for the boot process, etc). What's wrong with using/usr/local/kde2, or even/usr/kde2?
Maybe I would have noticed the/opt thing if building KDE2 from source, but just installing the RPMs didn't work too well to start with. I don't think any install procedures should silently create and populate/opt if you don't already have it.
Not only that, but after eReferee changed its name to officiating.com, Referee magazine wants an
injuction against them to prevent them from operating. What a bunch of assholes.
Well, it sounds like they're still redirecting from ereferee.com to officiating.com, so they're still using the name. Although I do think the court ruling was over-the-top, technically eReferee still seems to be violating it.
True - just from a PR perspective, it's unfortunate that there's so much overlap between the open software crowd and the mp3/dvd-swapping crowd. The public and the courts would be more likely to give free software a break if it were clear that the goal was just creation of useful and open software, with no connection to freely swapping content.
Not that I seriously advocate splitting these apart, but I wonder how different things would be right now if they were seen as more separate in the public eye.
I'm fully aware that the bacteria in question are unlikely to start the next plague. I was making a play on the previous poster's words. In fact, it sounds like these bacteria are specifically adapted for the hot insides of smoke stacks, so living in a human would probably be too cold for them:)
I would dispute that intellectual property is really being undermined by free software. The code is still owned by one or more persons, and licensing issues seem to be even more closely policed than those of proprietary software. I mean, when was the last time/. had an article about Bruce Perens accusing someone of violating Microsoft's EULA?:)
But seriously, what's being undermined is the notion that intellectual property is only valuable if it's scarce. The open source world is proving that ideas are more valuable in the presence of others, not less, and that people with good ideas are the most valuable resource you can have. Ideas and code are still property and there are still disputes over them, but rather than being zero-sum proprietary "products", the sharing of IP creates a sum that's much greater than its parts. The more you share, the more you get in return. And that's going to be a tough lesson for the elder dragons of the industry - sleeping on a bed of golden ideas all day just doesn't cut it anymore, because the action's all down in the Laketown bazaar.
My apologies if I just paraphrased the collected works of ESR (and J.R.R. Tolkien), but that's how I see it.
Well, for most big corporations, "keeping legislators informed" really means "getting some senators in our pockets so we can get protective legislation enacted". I don't think it's unreasonable to be worried about that sort of thing, especially since Microsoft has never depended on government help (and in fact has been at odds with the government) in the past. This is a big change for them, and they have a lot of influence.
You are twisting the words of Microsoft to suit your own ends, and it diminishes your credibility.
You're not too credible either - you forgot to close your emphasis, and you misspelled "outlawed". Not that Microsoft needs any help with word-twisting...
Slashdot Mirror
I thought that was over-the-top too, especially the juxtaposition of the phrases:
So all you folks playin' on street corners - QUIT IT! You're imperiling the future of Bertelsman, don't you know...
Under the DMCA, you should be able to submit a written affidavit that you are not infringing, and your ISP is supposed to put you back online immediately. The onus is then on the accuser to take you to court.
How well this works in practice, I don't know. Apparently it worked for some Napster users, though.
True, but on the other hand my body never talked me into picking it on the basis of its reliability, ease of use, and available applications. I was just stuck with it, when really I would have preferred to look like Harrison Bergeron :)
I'm just pointing out that the Secure Audio Path technology isn't a software bug, it's a specific design and implementation with the express purpose of hobbling the use of the tool, even though the tool is sold on the basis of how useful it is. It's one thing to just not have a feature; it's something entirely else to remove a feature that users expect and have been able to use in the past.
Not that I'm too worried - either someone will hack around it, or users will just not upgrade once word gets out. There's no way the millions of college kids will give up their mp3s now, no matter what they have to do.
I would dispute that claim - you can't say that in almost every instance the evidence is against the theory of evolution, and then just provide one example as if that proves it. If there really was more proof against evolution, don't you think the scientific community (the majority of which are smart enough to know that they couldn't avoid evidence that overwhelming) would stop supporting the theory of evolution? I refuse to believe that the worldwide scientific community is maintaining a sham theory just because they like it better somehow.
Sorry, but the theory of evolution is the current explanation that makes the most sense based on current evidence. It is much more likely that proto-turtles didn't have hard shells, and happened to mutate into real turtles fairly quickly, than it is that the entire theory of evolution is incorrect. Sure, there's stuff that isn't adequately explained at present, but evolution remains the best theory for explaining things on the basis of current evidence.
Wow, isn't that just what I need: an OS specifically designed to thwart me. Isn't Windows difficult enough to deal with as it is, without being deliberately hostile to the user's wishes? How can Microsoft justify releasing software specifically designed to hold the user back?
This is exactly the kind of innovation that I hope the open source movement will bury.
Cool, I didn't know that. Although I don't know how much GPL'd code out there is actually registered for copyright. Does the FSF do this for any code that's assigned to them? I bet 99% of the random projects on sourceforge haven't been through this step.
But there are plenty of bad, even malicious contracts out in the world of business, surely that doesn't invalidate them? A contract doesn't have to be fair, it just has to be agreed to. Commercial software developers can use GPL'd code or not, depending on whether they agree with the license terms. It's no different from licensing QNX, etc. - you have fixed obligations under your license, and if the terms place you at a disadvantage, well then you shouldn't have agreed.
But this works for video game publishers all the time - people who violate the copyrights on old games are still prosecuted, whether or not the game publisher is still making a profit on the game or even offering the game for sale at all. Copyright enforcement itself isn't scaled by the financial magnitude of the violation, although I admit that normally damage awards are. I don't think you could sue anyone for compensatory damages for violating the GPL, but you could probably force them to stop violating and possibly get punitive damages.
It's true that the GPL has iffy parts. The one that makes me the most nervous is the idea that a contract may not be valid without "consideration" changing hands - one would then have to prove that the hope of receiving future software enhancements from the parties receiving the GPL'd code is equivalent to "consideration". But I don't see the points which you've raised as particularly questionable.
Oh no! I'm being mocked by ZDNet! And we all know how much their opinions matter!!! Now I can never show my face again...wipes tear... ;)
But seriously, this is neat technology and it's news to some people. You don't get all cranky when the 10:00 TV news runs a story that you saw on CNN at noon, do you? /. doesn't always have the scoop, but they generate a lot of commentary about what they do post, and that's really what I read it for. And if you're not smart enough to figure out that cool new technology (which is presented in a positive light because it's damn cool) often has serious bugs, then maybe you should stick to reading ZDNet rather than slashdot.
I'll agree that there has been some less-than-responsible journalism on /., but then again I don't think you can necessarily hold up ZDNet as the bastion of responsible reporting either. /. gets it wrong some times, but you know what? Within 10 minutes of the story going up, if the editor or the submitter was on crack, someone will point out that fact. And /. is much more likely to print a front-page retraction than ZDNet.
Yeah, heaven forbid indeed. She should wait until she's at least 45 and fairly curmudgeonly before venturing into experiments in social science. We don't want the next generation to get any ideas about questioning the status quo, do we?
I mean, come on! I would be proud to have a daughter asking the tough questions at an early age - more power to her! That's an admirable trait in anyone, and if people are uncomfortable when someone questions these issues, then perhaps the problem lies with those who are made uncomfortable. Why can't kids talk about race, anyway? Adults obviously can't come to grips with it, so nobody else is allowed to try?
Well, how many different varieties of white Barbie versus black Barbie are there? (I'm really asking, I have no idea). The experiment was about people's reaction to the dolls, not the dolls themselves. That's why you hold the dolls constant and sample a number of people for their reactions.
More than 30 people would be a good sample, but I'm not sure I would have realized the importance of sample size when I was 9 either.
Maybe if you had read the interview, you would know exactly how close to yet far away from the truth you sound :)
Unfortunately, the two parties have warped state electoral laws enough to destroy any advantage that the electoral college might have provided. Electors are no longer statesmen or even really representatives in other than the technical sense; they're just party hacks who are picked for their extreme unwillingness to actually think about whom they're electing President.
We might as well go with straight popular vote counts or even instant runoff - at least that way the eventual winner could truly say that they have a mandate from a plurality of the country.
...and now they're unavailable to all. How exactly was this a great moral victory, giving in to the majority and all?
This is what a constitution is for - it protects the rights of the minority against whatever bright idea the majority has today.
Good point - what we really need now is the right to reverse-engineer and the right to strong encryption.
Although I agree with the right to bear arms, I have to point out that the amount of firepower in the hands of private citizens isn't necessarily the determining factor in winning a resistance to a corrupt U.S. government - the citizens of Vietnam did wonders with much simpler equipment, for example. Of course you're going to lose against tanks if you make a stand from an armed compound; but the U.S. government doesn't have a large enough standing army to withstand a widespread guerrilla movement which has popular support. I'm not sure that any size of standing army could effectively control the U.S. against a unified, unhappy populace, but then again it seems to work in China.
Not that I'm fomenting a revolution, but I see how it could be done. As did Thomas Jefferson, etc.
Well, but that matches up perfectly with the whole censorship thing, doesn't it? According to you, it's OK to give up rights if that's what the majority wants. And if you're in the minority but have legitimate reasons for holding a different viewpoint, you're out of luck.
This is exactly why you need a strong federal Constitution, to protect the rights of the minority against the depredations of the mob. Because let's face it - the great masses and their representatives are going to vote for the easy way out every time, rather than face the real responsibilities of citizenship in a representative government.
I'm just sorry for the Australians who are fully cognizant of their natural rights to defend themselves but have had their rights trampled on by the majority. Don't look now, but the next set of rights to strip away might be the ones that you find important.
Actually, I think if you'll read the American Bill of Rights, you'll see that it's the second amendment which preserves the right to bear arms. The first amendment is the freedom of speech (you know, that other thing people don't have in Australia, according to this article :)
The incidence of people being shot during traffic altercations in the U.S. must be over-reported overseas; most guns around here are accidentally used by the owner's children to shoot each other instead (tongue very firmly in cheek).
If they just wanted to use the patent defensively, they could have just published the technology unpatented. At that point it's prior art which they can use as a defense against claims of infringement, but it doesn't prevent anyone else from using it. That would be the ethical thing to do.
That is incorrect; an unenforced patent doesn't lose any power from the lack of enforcement. You're thinking of trademarks, perhaps?
If the major differences between trademarks, copyrights, and patents aren't already in the /. FAQ, they should be :)
True, /usr is a little over the top. Best would be /usr/gnome and then symlinks from /usr/bin, etc. Or /usr/local - a good option for a package manager would be to remember "do new rpms/debs go into /usr or /usr/local", because some people want all new stuff in local, but other people only want hand-compiled (possibly tweaked) stuff stored in /usr/local.
Wow, that was just what I found annoying about the KDE 2 install, since I didn't already have /opt and it didn't pop up any dialogs to let me know that it was installing all of this stuff on the / partition, so it filled up that partition (which I only allocated to be large enough for the boot process, etc). What's wrong with using /usr/local/kde2, or even /usr/kde2?
Maybe I would have noticed the /opt thing if building KDE2 from source, but just installing the RPMs didn't work too well to start with. I don't think any install procedures should silently create and populate /opt if you don't already have it.
Well, it sounds like they're still redirecting from ereferee.com to officiating.com, so they're still using the name. Although I do think the court ruling was over-the-top, technically eReferee still seems to be violating it.
True - just from a PR perspective, it's unfortunate that there's so much overlap between the open software crowd and the mp3/dvd-swapping crowd. The public and the courts would be more likely to give free software a break if it were clear that the goal was just creation of useful and open software, with no connection to freely swapping content.
Not that I seriously advocate splitting these apart, but I wonder how different things would be right now if they were seen as more separate in the public eye.
I'm fully aware that the bacteria in question are unlikely to start the next plague. I was making a play on the previous poster's words. In fact, it sounds like these bacteria are specifically adapted for the hot insides of smoke stacks, so living in a human would probably be too cold for them :)
I would dispute that intellectual property is really being undermined by free software. The code is still owned by one or more persons, and licensing issues seem to be even more closely policed than those of proprietary software. I mean, when was the last time /. had an article about Bruce Perens accusing someone of violating Microsoft's EULA? :)
But seriously, what's being undermined is the notion that intellectual property is only valuable if it's scarce. The open source world is proving that ideas are more valuable in the presence of others, not less, and that people with good ideas are the most valuable resource you can have. Ideas and code are still property and there are still disputes over them, but rather than being zero-sum proprietary "products", the sharing of IP creates a sum that's much greater than its parts. The more you share, the more you get in return. And that's going to be a tough lesson for the elder dragons of the industry - sleeping on a bed of golden ideas all day just doesn't cut it anymore, because the action's all down in the Laketown bazaar.
My apologies if I just paraphrased the collected works of ESR (and J.R.R. Tolkien), but that's how I see it.
Well, for most big corporations, "keeping legislators informed" really means "getting some senators in our pockets so we can get protective legislation enacted". I don't think it's unreasonable to be worried about that sort of thing, especially since Microsoft has never depended on government help (and in fact has been at odds with the government) in the past. This is a big change for them, and they have a lot of influence.
You're not too credible either - you forgot to close your emphasis, and you misspelled "outlawed". Not that Microsoft needs any help with word-twisting...