The approach most anti-spam laws take is that you receive spam you don't want, you contact the spammer saying you don't want it anymore, the spammer sends it again and you can sue. Given all the spam people get, that places a big burden on individuals in terms of time/money (money for legal costs) since a spammer may or may not comply and you have to keep track of who is complying and who isn't which would take a lot of your time.
The Missouri law has an interesting twist. They force spammers to label the spam in the subject with a standard prefix. If a spammer spams you without the prefix, you can sue. You don't need to contact the spammer before you can sue them. And the spammer has given you conclusive proof of his crime. So the time factor drops out of the equation and you can proceed with the lawsuit right away. If you get an unlabeled email, bam, you can sue. Now think about this, what if every state adopted such a law but with different prefixes for every state.
For Missouri:
MOADV: MOADLT:
For Ohio: OHADV: OHADLT:
etc...
People getting spammed would get instant evidence for a lawsuit ($$$) and it would make it almost impossible for spammers to send non-complying spam without opening themselves up to lawsuits. You could pay your way through college with the money collected! And if you don't want to bother, just setup a nice filter on your inbox to block subject containing (**ADV:, **ADLT:).
I could see spammers using offshore resources to spam which could give them a nice way to skate out of liability. In those cases, I would have the FTC put regulations on spam advertising such that if you receive a spam advertising a company's product or service that isn't labeled as required, the company can be held liable.
More regulations like the above sometimes makes things worse or has unforseen consequences, but one can dream.
Perhaps the slashdot description is a misnomer. The article talks about the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers suing the customers of Henry Ford's company. The RIAA and Kazaa/Napster provided music to the same market. RIAA is suing the customers of Kazaa/Napster. The situation is not a 1:1 mapping, but that is not the point of the article. The article is about the importance of public opinion. Litigation between a company and a company can be beneficial to the company suing. A company suing the public will be a disaster for the company. That is what the article is trying to say.
Microsoft is paranoid. The only thing that gets their attention is an impact on their growth or mark et share.
Strategy:
(1) Web sites start conforming to web standards even if the site has problems in IE. Balance conformance with a "best-viewed with" statement on your web site providing links to browsers that do conform to web standards and will render your site the best. Try to find a balance between how it looks in IE and web standards.
(2) Develop a gecko-based activex plugin for IE so that when your site is viewed, the plugin downloads and renders your site correctly.
(3) Build your web site so they are fully web standards compliant and develop a community project on top of cocoon to translate the maintainable web standards version into the botched IE version. Web developers stated that by not following web standards IE is costing them money. Web standards lower development costs. So you develop in web standards and reap cost/time benefits, while at the same time you isolate the costly IE development into a community-supported translator project which allows you to pool and therefore lower the cost. That would be a great product, probably already exists.
(4) There are a number of unpatched bugs in IE that crash the browser. You can use bugs on two fronts. You can setup your web application server to randomly inject bugs that will crash the browser. On your page, you the "best viewed with" campaign mentioned in #1.
I am not a web developer. Web developers understand their customer base and know which of the ideas above are crazy and which might be practical or useful. Ever web developer is capable of taking action. To force Microsoft to listen to it's customers, it's customers must use their paranoia to get action, otherwise, they will be ignored as they have been.
Include a sensor for detecting pda movement in 3 dimensions. It would make a simple and yet very innovative input device.
They sell sensors:
http://www.ballsemi.com
Doesn't anyone remember the voting machines?
on
Windows ATMs by 2005
·
· Score: 1
Diebold used windows in the voting machines. Granted, banks have a lot more experience and a lot more incentive to protect the infrastructure. The best laid plans of mice and men sometime run awry.
It sounds like company A licensed company B's COBOL code and used it as a template for building a VB application that performed the same function. When someone translates a written work from English to some other language, who owns the copyright on the translation? Is it a derivative work? Translating a program from one language to another would fall into the same category. When you translate written works between human languages/cultures, you end up making quite a few changes to adapt the story to the target language/culture. So what is copyright law's view on a translation?
The globe and mail summary seems to be missing a lot of details. Access to the full report would be required in order to determine what the study found. Now that most people have firewalls, the attacks have moved hire up the osi model. If most apache setups are solid as most firewalls are, then the attacker moves up to the application level to perform their attacks. e.g. Bad perl/php code. Given the whole linux vs. windows mania and given the short, inadequate, and confusing summary, I would suspect the post was designed to arouse enough curiosity to get people to buy the full report. Someone said the full report was 30 pounds. Did anyone actually read the article or was it just submitted because the convoluted and confusing summary said the two phrases that fire up slashdotters, "linux bad", "windows better".
Hypocrisy. SCO, Microsoft, and other software companies talk about the IP/Copyright risks of open source. At the heart of this concern is the fact that the source is actually available to open source software and can therefore be examined for ip/copyright violations very easily. Have SCO or Microsoft violated IP/Copyright laws throught stealing code? Who knows? Only microsoft or sco ever see there respective code. Essentially, closed-source software uses an honor system. Given the number of companies that have been suing Microsoft AND WINNING for IP/copyright violations the last few years, I would say we are seeing just the tip of an ice berg of ip/copyright violations across their whole product line. And that is with the source being CLOSED. Imagine if it were available to the same level of scrutiny that open source software is. My major objection to SCO and Microsoft's complaints about open source software and IP is that it is extremely self-righteous given the examples to the contrary in their own histories with IP. I suggest Darl take his own advice. There was an intriguing idea on how to inspect closed-source software for violations on slashdot the other day.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1258642,00. as p
This software would make possible the comparison of two source code trees without actually making the source code available. Maybe someday proprietary software companies will be held to the same standard that they are holding open source software to.
I have to say that open source software has come out pretty well regarding ip issues thus far. I believe the SCO matter will ultimately fall in favor of open source. I felt compelled to speak out against SCO and Microsoft s' hypocrisy.
Will someone please put McBride and Canopy out of their misery? McBride said that they have no debt at the SCO Conference. That is great news for the companies that are suing SCO. With no creditors having grabs on anything SCO has of value, SCO will lose it's precious UNIX IP to IBM/RedHat/Anyone else who brings a suit against them. They don't have the money to pay out a settlement, so that leaves their IP. Please do it quickly. McBride and other execs are dumping their stock and yet telling everyone they will conquer the world. He is giving the Irish a bad name!
The obscurity of the definition is actually what causes the problem. People want to do X, Y, Z with there computer as stated. In order to do that, you need support layers below the layer that people see when they perform X, Y, and Z. Microsoft owns the support layers and the actual application functionality that is used to perform X, Y, and Z. Looking at Apple, they have there own support layer (Mac OS), but they have chosen to restrict the hardware their software runs on. That is an Apple decision. Looking at Real Player, they sell an application that does X. They depend of the support layer provided by Microsoft. If you say an operating system is a product that provides X, Y, Z, then Microsoft including software that does X, Y, & Z including the support layers is certainly no crime. In order to compete, the Real Player people would have to be capable of doing the same. The problem is, Real doesn't own the support layers. Microsoft owns them, and normally Microsoft would want to include Real Player to provide the added functionality that customers demand. But Microsoft makes their own product and naturally don't want to lose market share to Real player by including it. Microsoft bundles windows with almost every pc shipped. So when a person buys there computer, the operating system providing X,Y, and Z is rolled into the cost. So from the customers point of view, Windows Media Player didn't cost them anything since it came with the PC. So Real Player costing anything more than $0 makes it look considerably more expensive. Real has no leverage with hardware vendors since they don't supply any of the support layers needed to run X, Y, Z. Real wants to be a multimedia company, not an operating system company. But to compete fairly by the X, Y, Z definition either Microsoft's OS division would have to be a separate company (so they might be interested in Real), or Real would have to maintain their own support layer (kernel, drivers, etc.) or Real would need to sit on someone else's support layer (Apple? they provide their own). As linux matures, it may provide that support layer. The existence of linux is a sign of what the market wants. Microsoft has a monopoly in the os market and has extensive control. The market wants a good portion of the support layers to be commodities costing little or no money. Hence, linux has emerged to commodities those support layers.
If you are using samba, you might want to try using davenport. Davenport offers a read only listing of files in your browser and permits read/write via webdav. davenport converts webdav requests to smb requests via the jcifs project. Davenport is a java servlet.
I saw that windows server 2003 web hosting edition was being snapped up quite a bit in the last netcraft survey. A 5% loss of market share for linux. IIS has had a lot of security issues and so has windows server 2003 in the past year. I wonder if the 8000 sites that were lost to windows server 2003 web hosting edition were due to the SCO case against linux. The threat of lawsuits instills greater fear than the threat of security problems. SCO linux case = windows server 2003 web hosting edition sales? I don't believe that microsoft is behind sco's behavior, but "licensing" unix ip from them gives them more $$$. And every dollar buys sco more time to keep a cloud of unsubstantiated uncertainty around linux. The SCO case is an opportunity, one that microsoft has not passed up. This is what companies do. I always see the following post floating around:
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have moved from the "laugh at you" stage to the "fight you" stage. What next is the most exciting stage of all...
I work in a college IT department and we found early on that students using file sharing programs didn't even know that the files were setup to be shared by default. As I understand it, the RIAA is going after the bigtime uploaders. A lot of people may be bigtime uploaders without even realizing it. Let's say Grandma has a broadband connection to download pictures/videos of the grand kids. Let's also say a few of the grand kids like free music a lot and setup a file sharing program on grandma's pc. A lot of music accumulates on grandma's computer which is left on most of the time. The grand kids acquire quite a music collection at grandma's. Then one day grandma get's busted by the RIAA for pirating music via p2p. The whole point of this little segment is to point out the distinct possibility that many of the greatest p2p uploaders on the net may not even know they are big uploaders or uploaders at all.
He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.
The law professor's commentary suggests that while this case is being spun against open source software and could certainly affect it, the case is also an example that demonstrates significant problems in the software licensing of proprietary code. Given further analysis, the commentary could be developed into a thorough examination into the problems of software licensing and proprietary software. If the proper legal analysis was completed by reputable individuals, the resulting work could be published nation-wide in various reputable magazines, journals, and newspapers. The analysis could then be expanded throughout the IBM vs. SCO legal action. Let's change the focus of this case from Open Source ignores IP issues to the destructive nature of software licensing in business. If IBM wins, we get an "I told you so" card and the momentum behind open source could hit critical mass and be a BIG win. If SCO wins, it won't just be a blow against open source, but it will be a blow against every business since the powers of the copyright holder concerning software will increase by an order of magnitude. SCO and others are spinning this case against open source with no published evidence, just unsubstantiated legal claims. For any ip lawyer who reads slashdot, we need you. Competent analysis of this case is essential. The outcome of this case is either going to benefit software development or hinder software development, both proprietary and open source. Let's stop allowing SCO to spin this case without substantiating any of their claims, let's spin the case to show what it is really about, software licensing. Let's do it not with unsubstatiated claims, but with superb ongoing legal analysis of the situation throughout the progress of the case. Thank you.
Abortion is hardly petty. The drinking age of 21 is petty. Maybe I shouldn't ask this question due to the possible answer, but which do you consider to be the more valuable, people or beer? You will be 21 soon enough. In a way, abortion builds on your issue with the drinking age. 3 million people each year never get the opportunity to reach the age of 1. Changing the minimum age from 21 to something lower will hardly help them.
The internet is just that, an inter-connected network of networks. The endpoint of one network is a network containing one or more devices. Phone service provides a phone line, and end point, you can hook as many phones up in your house as line current permits (more with special equipment). The primary value in the internet is the utility of it as general purpose network. All kinds of new services can be added. The cornucopia of possible services have different requirements, some need a lot of bandwidth, some need low latency, and some need both. ISPs have several areas in which to differentiate there services:
(1) Reliability of Service (how much down time will you accept?) (2) Bandwidth (5GB/month, 10GB/month, upstream? downstream?) (3) Latency (40ms, 80ms, 100ms) (4) Consistency of Service (do you need a certain minimum transfer rate to always be available? do you need a certain minimum latency to always be available? how often?
Some other important items:
(1) When I hit my bandwidth cap, do you shutoff my connection or bill me the amount I went over. What if I pay for 5gb/month and then I am willing to pay for up 2gb/month over before the connection is shutoff? (2) I need to be able to control all my account information via the web (and maybe a phone menu) and make adjustments as needed. If I want to know how much of my 5gb/month cap I used, I can just go to the web and find out easily. (3) If I want lower latency or more bandwidth over my per monthly fee, make it easy for me to see the cost and buy it quickly if the price is right. (4) Sell or lease VoIP equipment and local/long distance phone service via my connection. For this particular case, I pay a monthly fee for normal broadband and a fee for local service. Whenever I use VoIP, give that particular service low latency and bandwidth priority whenever I use it on my connection. That can be the value add of the VoIP service over just trying to do it over my normal broadband connection. Selling services that bundle a bandwidth or latency upgrade for just that service provide the value add.
The phone network will be used less and less frequently. If the internet doesn't kill it, the cellular networks will. The internet is a general purpose network and this fact will continue to devalue the current phone network. The value in the old phone network is in the part of it that cost the most $$$ to setup, the wiring and fiber that was run to all the homes and businesses. There is alot of opportunity for those who can accomplish the items listed above.
All robber-barons later in life give money to build schools, museums, theatres, and many other kinds of charity acts. Being a major shareholder and the ceo during the period of which you abused your monopoly pretty much ensures that from history's point of view, Gates is a robber baron. But giving away $$$ to to a charitable cause does not mean it is being done for any other reason than the reason that motivates all robber-barons.
I see Microsoft = U.S. economy mentioned in a lot of posts. IBM's market capitalization is considerably larger than Microsoft's. In fact, a lot of companies have much large market capitalization and much larger revenues then Microsoft. Microsoft stock is tied up into every IRA in the country. A blow to Microsoft would likely collapse a lot of IRAs and expose a lot of funds mis-management and illegal financial activities. That is why so many people are eager to protect Microsoft. A good economy is one where a lot of money changes a lot of hands. A monopoly is opposed to such a process. Microsoft is protected to keep a circus from coming to town that would make Enron look like a mere juggling mime.
If the power goes out and the wireless equipment/VoIP phones are not on a UPS, the phone system to that whole building goes down. So the need for a UPS on each piece of equipment for reliable phone service is an issue. Of course, a PBX suffers from the same problem.
Slashdot Mirror
The approach most anti-spam laws take is that you receive spam you don't want, you contact the spammer saying you don't want it anymore, the spammer sends it again and you can sue. Given all the spam people get, that places a big burden on individuals in terms of time/money (money for legal costs) since a spammer may or may not comply and you have to keep track of who is complying and who isn't which would take a lot of your time.
The Missouri law has an interesting twist. They force spammers to label the spam in the subject with a standard prefix. If a spammer spams you without the prefix, you can sue. You don't need to contact the spammer before you can sue them. And the spammer has given you conclusive proof of his crime. So the time factor drops out of the equation and you can proceed with the lawsuit right away. If you get an unlabeled email, bam, you can sue. Now think about this, what if every state adopted such a law but with different prefixes for every state.
For Missouri:
MOADV:
MOADLT:
For Ohio:
OHADV:
OHADLT:
etc...
People getting spammed would get instant evidence for a lawsuit ($$$) and it would make it almost impossible for spammers to send non-complying spam without opening themselves up to lawsuits. You could pay your way through college with the money collected! And if you don't want to bother, just setup a nice filter on your inbox to block subject containing (**ADV:, **ADLT:).
I could see spammers using offshore resources to spam which could give them a nice way to skate out of liability. In those cases, I would have the FTC put regulations on spam advertising such that if you receive a spam advertising a company's product or service that isn't labeled as required, the company can be held liable.
More regulations like the above sometimes makes things worse or has unforseen consequences, but one can dream.
CPU cycles keep getting cheaper. I wouldn't bet on a solution like that helping for very long if at all.
Perhaps the slashdot description is a misnomer. The article talks about the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers suing the customers of Henry Ford's company. The RIAA and Kazaa/Napster provided music to the same market. RIAA is suing the customers of Kazaa/Napster. The situation is not a 1:1 mapping, but that is not the point of the article. The article is about the importance of public opinion. Litigation between a company and a company can be beneficial to the company suing. A company suing the public will be a disaster for the company. That is what the article is trying to say.
Microsoft is paranoid. The only thing that gets their attention is an impact on their growth or mark et share.
Strategy:
(1) Web sites start conforming to web standards even if the site has problems in IE. Balance conformance with a "best-viewed with" statement on your web site providing links to browsers that do conform to web standards and will render your site the best. Try to find a balance between how it looks in IE and web standards.
(2) Develop a gecko-based activex plugin for IE so that when your site is viewed, the plugin downloads and renders your site correctly.
(3) Build your web site so they are fully web standards compliant and develop a community project on top of cocoon to translate the maintainable web standards version into the botched IE version. Web developers stated that by not following web standards IE is costing them money. Web standards lower development costs. So you develop in web standards and reap cost/time benefits, while at the same time you isolate the costly IE development into a community-supported translator project which allows you to pool and therefore lower the cost. That would be a great product, probably already exists.
(4) There are a number of unpatched bugs in IE that crash the browser. You can use bugs on two fronts. You can setup your web application server to randomly inject bugs that will crash the browser. On your page, you the "best viewed with" campaign mentioned in #1.
I am not a web developer. Web developers understand their customer base and know which of the ideas above are crazy and which might be practical or useful. Ever web developer is capable of taking action. To force Microsoft to listen to it's customers, it's customers must use their paranoia to get action, otherwise, they will be ignored as they have been.
It would probably help SCO's case if Darl was a 12 year old girl.
Include a sensor for detecting pda movement in 3 dimensions. It would make a simple and yet very innovative input device.
They sell sensors:
http://www.ballsemi.com
Diebold used windows in the voting machines. Granted, banks have a lot more experience and a lot more incentive to protect the infrastructure.
/ 21 40216&mode=nested&tid=103&tid=126&tid= 990 4/19 9210&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=172. org/article.pl?sid=03/08/23/142324 3&mode=nested&tid=103&tid=126&tid=172&tid= 992 1/22 26226&mode=nested&tid=103&tid=116&tid=126&tid= 991 4022 6&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=172&tid= 995 3258 &mode=nested&tid=103&tid=126&tid=128&tid=9 9
The best laid plans of mice and men sometime run awry.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/05
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/
http://slashdot
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/11/1
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/24/1
It sounds like company A licensed company B's COBOL code and used it as a template for building a VB application that performed the same function. When someone translates a written work from English to some other language, who owns the copyright on the translation? Is it a derivative work? Translating a program from one language to another would fall into the same category. When you translate written works between human languages/cultures, you end up making quite a few changes to adapt the story to the target language/culture. So what is copyright law's view on a translation?
The globe and mail summary seems to be missing a lot of details. Access to the full report would be required in order to determine what the study found. Now that most people have firewalls, the attacks have moved hire up the osi model. If most apache setups are solid as most firewalls are, then the attacker moves up to the application level to perform their attacks. e.g. Bad perl/php code. Given the whole linux vs. windows mania and given the short, inadequate, and confusing summary, I would suspect the post was designed to arouse enough curiosity to get people to buy the full report. Someone said the full report was 30 pounds. Did anyone actually read the article or was it just submitted because the convoluted and confusing summary said the two phrases that fire up slashdotters, "linux bad", "windows better".
Hypocrisy. SCO, Microsoft, and other software companies talk about the IP/Copyright risks of open source. At the heart of this concern is the fact that the source is actually available to open source software and can therefore be examined for ip/copyright violations very easily. Have SCO or Microsoft violated IP/Copyright laws throught stealing code? Who knows? Only microsoft or sco ever see there respective code. Essentially, closed-source software uses an honor system. Given the number of companies that have been suing Microsoft AND WINNING for IP/copyright violations the last few years, I would say we are seeing just the tip of an ice berg of ip/copyright violations across their whole product line. And that is with the source being CLOSED. Imagine if it were available to the same level of scrutiny that open source software is. My major objection to SCO and Microsoft's complaints about open source software and IP is that it is extremely self-righteous given the examples to the contrary in their own histories with IP. I suggest Darl take his own advice. There was an intriguing idea on how to inspect closed-source software for violations on slashdot the other day.
9 20 7&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=156&tid=187&tid= 88
. as p
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/09/212
here is a link to the software mentioned above:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/comparator/
here is a link to the eweek article:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1258642,00
This software would make possible the comparison of two source code trees without actually making the source code available. Maybe someday proprietary software companies will be held to the same standard that they are holding open source software to.
I have to say that open source software has come out pretty well regarding ip issues thus far. I believe the SCO matter will ultimately fall in favor of open source. I felt compelled to speak out against SCO and Microsoft s' hypocrisy.
Will someone please put McBride and Canopy out of their misery? McBride said that they have no debt at the SCO Conference. That is great news for the companies that are suing SCO. With no creditors having grabs on anything SCO has of value, SCO will lose it's precious UNIX IP to IBM/RedHat/Anyone else who brings a suit against them. They don't have the money to pay out a settlement, so that leaves their IP. Please do it quickly. McBride and other execs are dumping their stock and yet telling everyone they will conquer the world. He is giving the Irish a bad name!
The obscurity of the definition is actually what causes the problem. People want to do X, Y, Z with there computer as stated. In order to do that, you need support layers below the layer that people see when they perform X, Y, and Z. Microsoft owns the support layers and the actual application functionality that is used to perform X, Y, and Z. Looking at Apple, they have there own support layer (Mac OS), but they have chosen to restrict the hardware their software runs on. That is an Apple decision. Looking at Real Player, they sell an application that does X. They depend of the support layer provided by Microsoft. If you say an operating system is a product that provides X, Y, Z, then Microsoft including software that does X, Y, & Z including the support layers is certainly no crime. In order to compete, the Real Player people would have to be capable of doing the same. The problem is, Real doesn't own the support layers. Microsoft owns them, and normally Microsoft would want to include Real Player to provide the added functionality that customers demand. But Microsoft makes their own product and naturally don't want to lose market share to Real player by including it. Microsoft bundles windows with almost every pc shipped. So when a person buys there computer, the operating system providing X,Y, and Z is rolled into the cost. So from the customers point of view, Windows Media Player didn't cost them anything since it came with the PC. So Real Player costing anything more than $0 makes it look considerably more expensive. Real has no leverage with hardware vendors since they don't supply any of the support layers needed to run X, Y, Z. Real wants to be a multimedia company, not an operating system company. But to compete fairly by the X, Y, Z definition either Microsoft's OS division would have to be a separate company (so they might be interested in Real), or Real would have to maintain their own support layer (kernel, drivers, etc.) or Real would need to sit on someone else's support layer (Apple? they provide their own). As linux matures, it may provide that support layer. The existence of linux is a sign of what the market wants. Microsoft has a monopoly in the os market and has extensive control. The market wants a good portion of the support layers to be commodities costing little or no money. Hence, linux has emerged to commodities those support layers.
If you are using samba, you might want to try using davenport. Davenport offers a read only listing of files in your browser and permits read/write via webdav. davenport converts webdav requests to smb requests via the jcifs project. Davenport is a java servlet.
davenport.sourceforge.net
I saw that windows server 2003 web hosting edition was being snapped up quite a bit in the last netcraft survey. A 5% loss of market share for linux. IIS has had a lot of security issues and so has windows server 2003 in the past year. I wonder if the 8000 sites that were lost to windows server 2003 web hosting edition were due to the SCO case against linux. The threat of lawsuits instills greater fear than the threat of security problems. SCO linux case = windows server 2003 web hosting edition sales? I don't believe that microsoft is behind sco's behavior, but "licensing" unix ip from them gives them more $$$. And every dollar buys sco more time to keep a cloud of unsubstantiated uncertainty around linux. The SCO case is an opportunity, one that microsoft has not passed up. This is what companies do. I always see the following post floating around:
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have moved from the "laugh at you" stage to the "fight you" stage. What next is the most exciting stage of all...
I work in a college IT department and we found early on that students using file sharing programs didn't even know that the files were setup to be shared by default. As I understand it, the RIAA is going after the bigtime uploaders. A lot of people may be bigtime uploaders without even realizing it. Let's say Grandma has a broadband connection to download pictures/videos of the grand kids. Let's also say a few of the grand kids like free music a lot and setup a file sharing program on grandma's pc. A lot of music accumulates on grandma's computer which is left on most of the time. The grand kids acquire quite a music collection at grandma's. Then one day grandma get's busted by the RIAA for pirating music via p2p. The whole point of this little segment is to point out the distinct possibility that many of the greatest p2p uploaders on the net may not even know they are big uploaders or uploaders at all.
He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.
The law professor's commentary suggests that while this case is being spun against open source software and could certainly affect it, the case is also an example that demonstrates significant problems in the software licensing of proprietary code. Given further analysis, the commentary could be developed into a thorough examination into the problems of software licensing and proprietary software. If the proper legal analysis was completed by reputable individuals, the resulting work could be published nation-wide in various reputable magazines, journals, and newspapers. The analysis could then be expanded throughout the IBM vs. SCO legal action. Let's change the focus of this case from Open Source ignores IP issues to the destructive nature of software licensing in business. If IBM wins, we get an "I told you so" card and the momentum behind open source could hit critical mass and be a BIG win. If SCO wins, it won't just be a blow against open source, but it will be a blow against every business since the powers of the copyright holder concerning software will increase by an order of magnitude. SCO and others are spinning this case against open source with no published evidence, just unsubstantiated legal claims. For any ip lawyer who reads slashdot, we need you. Competent analysis of this case is essential. The outcome of this case is either going to benefit software development or hinder software development, both proprietary and open source. Let's stop allowing SCO to spin this case without substantiating any of their claims, let's spin the case to show what it is really about, software licensing. Let's do it not with unsubstatiated claims, but with superb ongoing legal analysis of the situation throughout the progress of the case. Thank you.
Abortion is hardly petty. The drinking age of 21 is petty. Maybe I shouldn't ask this question due to the possible answer, but which do you consider to be the more valuable, people or beer? You will be 21 soon enough. In a way, abortion builds on your issue with the drinking age. 3 million people each year never get the opportunity to reach the age of 1. Changing the minimum age from 21 to something lower will hardly help them.
The internet is just that, an inter-connected network of networks. The endpoint of one network is a network containing one or more devices. Phone service provides a phone line, and end point, you can hook as many phones up in your house as line current permits (more with special equipment). The primary value in the internet is the utility of it as general purpose network. All kinds of new services can be added. The cornucopia of possible services have different requirements, some need a lot of bandwidth, some need low latency, and some need both. ISPs have several areas in which to differentiate there services:
(1) Reliability of Service (how much down time will you accept?)
(2) Bandwidth (5GB/month, 10GB/month, upstream? downstream?)
(3) Latency (40ms, 80ms, 100ms)
(4) Consistency of Service (do you need a certain minimum transfer rate to always be available? do you need a certain minimum latency to always be available? how often?
Some other important items:
(1) When I hit my bandwidth cap, do you shutoff my connection or bill me the amount I went over. What if I pay for 5gb/month and then I am willing to pay for up 2gb/month over before the connection is shutoff?
(2) I need to be able to control all my account information via the web (and maybe a phone menu) and make adjustments as needed. If I want to know how much of my 5gb/month cap I used, I can just go to the web and find out easily.
(3) If I want lower latency or more bandwidth over my per monthly fee, make it easy for me to see the cost and buy it quickly if the price is right.
(4) Sell or lease VoIP equipment and local/long distance phone service via my connection. For this particular case, I pay a monthly fee for normal broadband and a fee for local service. Whenever I use VoIP, give that particular service low latency and bandwidth priority whenever I use it on my connection. That can be the value add of the VoIP service over just trying to do it over my normal broadband connection. Selling services that bundle a bandwidth or latency upgrade for just that service provide the value add.
The phone network will be used less and less frequently. If the internet doesn't kill it, the cellular networks will. The internet is a general purpose network and this fact will continue to devalue the current phone network. The value in the old phone network is in the part of it that cost the most $$$ to setup, the wiring and fiber that was run to all the homes and businesses. There is alot of opportunity for those who can accomplish the items listed above.
sendmail?
named?
As in the M$ world, you have choices on your applications. You just picked the two buggiest UNIX apps in the bunch.
don't use sendmail, use qmail or exim
don't use named, use djbdns
Amen!
By that logic, the post office should be shutdown.
All robber-barons later in life give money to build schools, museums, theatres, and many other kinds of charity acts. Being a major shareholder and the ceo during the period of which you abused your monopoly pretty much ensures that from history's point of view, Gates is a robber baron. But giving away $$$ to to a charitable cause does not mean it is being done for any other reason than the reason that motivates all robber-barons.
I see Microsoft = U.S. economy mentioned in a lot of posts. IBM's market capitalization is considerably larger than Microsoft's. In fact, a lot of companies have much large market capitalization and much larger revenues then Microsoft. Microsoft stock is tied up into every IRA in the country. A blow to Microsoft would likely collapse a lot of IRAs and expose a lot of funds mis-management and illegal financial activities. That is why so many people are eager to protect Microsoft. A good economy is one where a lot of money changes a lot of hands. A monopoly is opposed to such a process. Microsoft is protected to keep a circus from coming to town that would make Enron look like a mere juggling mime.
If the power goes out and the wireless equipment/VoIP phones are not on a UPS, the phone system to that whole building goes down. So the need for a UPS on each piece of equipment for reliable phone service is an issue. Of course, a PBX suffers from the same problem.