You've fallen for the classic Big Company tactic: they do something, and you assume the law is on their side.
You have a legal right (under most circumstances) to resell Windows. Microsoft doesn't want you to, and eBay prevents you from doing so because eBay is Microsoft's bitch.
Even if you receive a letter from Bill Gates himself, signed by his Army of Lawyers, saying "You cannot resell Windows", it's still won't be true.
You're being too sentimental. You work for money. If the money is fading, so should your loyalty. Loyalty ends when the first paycheck bounces, and there's nothing wrong with fleeing preemptively.
If it makes you feel better about leaving your friends behind: if the company is so shaky that any one employee leaving dooms it, then they're screwed anyway.
Finally, an encyclopedia with a techno-communist bias! I was getting so tired of my old Dead White Male encyclopedias, and the Revisionist History editions played hell with my self esteem.
Seriously, how does the accuracy check compare to something released by Encyclopedia Brittanica? Will there be any sort of verification, or am I going to be sifting through a few thousand "First post!" articles doing research?
I'm halfway with you on this. I don't think spam, in general, is as evil as some make it out. But in this case, there is a genuine privacy and (maybe) security risk.
Advertising to the masses, through TV commercials or mass e-mails, is one thing. Retrieving personal info (think: Doubleclick web bugs) is another, even if their goal is just to send you "targeted" advertising.
Do you really want Joe Spammer to be in a position to know that you are currently online, with IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, just received an e-mail advertising "hot teen lesbian action", and clicked on the link within after only twenty seconds? That's easy for them to do. With a little more work, they could associate your e-mail address / cookies with your physical address and other personal info.
There is a fine line between advertising and spying. Its been crossed before, and web bugs will be used to cross it again.
I'll save us all a lot of trouble by posting this:
Wow, it would be really funny to make it say #JOKE. Would really freak out somebody on acid. If its waterproof, you can pretend to catch it and make it say #JOKE2.
If the "hype" was too much, then it's not the media's fault. The fault would lie with the companies spreading fear to sell their products, such as code fixes or survival gear. And the capable but (hypothetically) wrong experts who told the media about the problem and the possible consequences. Even the experts didn't really know what would happen, so its unfair the expect the media to know.
Before you start thinking "nothing happened, so the media went overboard", try this:
If the sh*t had hit the fan, and the media had done any less hype-spreading, would you congratulate them for restraining themselves so well?
These ideas are pretty spiffy, but what about the near future? Are we really going to worry much over "releastic interstellar explorers" before we manage to get a mission to Mars to go right?
I'm not criticising (long-range plans are a good thing), just curious.
I'm a big supporter of education. I believe that educating these children will ultimately allow them to improve their situation. They can get better jobs and make enough money to provide for themselves, rather than relying on sporadic handouts of food. Or they can learn the skills to advance their society directly, perhaps more efficient farming techniques or energy science. It's sort of like "teach a man to fish...", updated for a more capitalist worldview.
But I'm really just basing that on faith. It's a guess. Is all the money, and all the children's time, a good investment? Will it help create a self-sufficient society? Or are the children spending so much time at school that they cannot scrounge enough food to get by, with little long-term benefit?
It's quite nice to donate money to make ourselves feel better (or so I assume; I'm a cheap bastard), but how do we find out what really works best?
Patent the idea of patenting painfully obvious and pre-existing business techniques as a way of screwing over competitors who cannot afford lawyers to prove that the patent is invalid.
I can't really get pissed off at the church for filtering. It would seem really strange to me if they didn't filter out porn and maybe a few other categories like the occult. They are a non-government entity, so can do whatever they want.
Filtering is totally consistent with the Catholic way. If they didn't filter, they'd be hypocrits.
At worst, I might say "Shame on you, say twenty Hail Mary's" if they didn't make an honest effort to get half-decent filterware, or they are intentionally blocking (for instance) Protestant churches or general medical websites.
The TicketMaster case was about tricking users into thinking that such-and-such company was formally associated with TicketMaster. Since there was no formal association, it was illegal. Deep linking was just a mechanism used to make that fraudulent claim.
Unless you claim the material as your own, deep linking is still quite legal. Otherwise, old-fashioned copyright laws and business regulations will bite you.
It may not be the greatest thing in the history of the universe, but it has its place.
Yes, serious users should have backup systems and should not be dependent on a single piece of hardware. But not all organizations or individuals can afford the backups. And it's always nice to have one more safety net.
Just think of it as a (theoretically) cheap way to make data integrity somewhat safer, without sacrificing useful uptime. Could be useful?
Someone points out a goatse.cx link, and gets moderated down as a troll? I can see "-1, incoherent" or maybe "-1, you're just encouraging them", but it's not a troll.
Oh, don't forget to moderate me down as offtopic. Heaven forbid that criticism of the moderation system be tolerated by the moderators.
I'd say the Internet is one of, if not THE most complicated political, social and scientific phenomenon ever to arise in human history.
My bad. The sarcasm tag must be broken. My point was that we cannot seem to handle the internet, so I'm skeptical as to how we can be a united world. I agree that the internet is not a simple thing, but it's nothing compared to the implications of a world government.
I have this mental picture, of billions of people staring at their computer screens in shocked disgust. Pointing at their neightbors and screaming "Get this crap off my internet!"
The screaming people get together. Communities point at each other cry out "Get this obscene material off my internet!"
The communities band together. Countries elect officials who cry "Get this dangerous material off our internet!"
The countries finally notice each other, and realize that the internet is a global thing.
So countries start pointing at each other and screaming "You get off my internet!"
We're supposedly moving towards the one world government. We can't even deal with a simple little international network!
...Congress is just regulating commerce among the states....
Then why doesn't Congress pass a national blood alchohol level law, instead of coercing the states to do so? Or a bill mandating censorware? There are limits to the "interstate commerce" argument. A sufficiently liberal court might say that DUI laws fall into interstate commerce, but not so long ago the national speed limit struck down as outside federal authority.
Pretty much anything can be said to effect interstate commerce, but that doesn't mean the federal government has authority over everything it is not specifically denied.
It makes it sound like you're saying "I want to be allowed to recklessly endanger my fellow citizens" rather than "I want the governor and state legislature to decide what's dangerous and what's not."
And yet, most of us are saying exactly the second of those statements. I acknowledge that the federal government has done a lot of good by bending the rules, but it bothers me that the bending has happened sneakily. That concern applies to the good laws as well as the bad.
If America wants the advantages of a strong federal government, and is willing to accept the disadvantages, fine. The way to go about it is to pass a Constitutional Amendment, not to use taxation as a coercive tool.
The federal government has a number of restrictions placed on its power. Certain powers (or domains of regulation) are reserved for the states.
The federal government is bypassing those restrictions.
They aren't even hiding it. The two "main" presidential candidates debated over how, exactly, each of them will bypass the restrictions. They have such wonderful plans based on skirting around the Constitution. And, I must admit, that some good has been accomplished by federal meddling in state business. However, I see a shift in power and in form of government that I want to call people's attention to. Personally, I usually feel that federal government is too powerful, but it is better that you disagree with me fully informed than agree with me blindly.
The federal government taxes states' citizens, then threatens to withold funding for "state run" programs from state which do not pass certain laws or meet certain requirements. They do this, in part, in order to bypass those restrictions on their authority.
Recently, president Clinton signed a law stating that any state which did not set a 0.08 blood alchohol level standard for DUI would lose (some) federal funding for highways. The DUI laws (and standards) are entirely in the states' authority, not the federal. In effect, the federal government has usurped a power reserved for the states.
"Usurped" may be too strong a word; each state can, after all, simply decline to meet that standard. They will lose federal funding, but they can simply fund the roads themselves.
Federal funding my ass. The fed will tax the citizens of the states who choose not to comply, then send that money out of that state and into another. They state cannot "make up for" the lost revenue; they can, at best, tax the citizens even more to fund the highway projects. But they still pay, either way.
The federal government is, in effect, saying "We want to have something happen, but we don't have the authority to pass a law to make it happen. So we are going to tax you to fund programs that you like, then later threaten to withold your own money from you unless you do what we want to you. Yeah, we know we're aren't supposed to be involved in this sort of thing, but the program is 'state run' and simply 'federally funded'."
Once this technology is dependable and affordable, I think it will be a big deal. Not only is eye motion easy for a human to perform, but its very natural. That means newbie users can (in theory) use an old form of communication rather than having to depend entirely on a new skill set.
With eye tracking, software can notice that the user is looking all over the screen, probably trying to find the right menu item or command. This is a signal to pop up help or (on Windows machines) advertise instruction manuals for sale at Amazon. If you know what you're doing, turn that feature off. If you don't, your software is a lot friendlier with it on.
Maybe no more scrolling? Your computer tracks how quickly you read and moves the text by at that rate. This would be a boon for people with weak hands for whatever reason.
And, of course, aiming in Quake will never be the same after the "eyes of death" patch.
Weird Al, long may he reign, always gets explicit permission to do parodies. The only exception was "Amish Paradise", and Al at least claims he was informed by his people that permission had been given.
And as far as "you should be ok", I'd revise to include "if you can afford a decent lawyer". Being sued can ruin you, whether or not you're right.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a legal right (under most circumstances) to resell Windows. Microsoft doesn't want you to, and eBay prevents you from doing so because eBay is Microsoft's bitch.
Even if you receive a letter from Bill Gates himself, signed by his Army of Lawyers, saying "You cannot resell Windows", it's still won't be true.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
If it makes you feel better about leaving your friends behind: if the company is so shaky that any one employee leaving dooms it, then they're screwed anyway.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Seriously, how does the accuracy check compare to something released by Encyclopedia Brittanica? Will there be any sort of verification, or am I going to be sifting through a few thousand "First post!" articles doing research?
My mom is not a Karma whore!
I'm halfway with you on this. I don't think spam, in general, is as evil as some make it out. But in this case, there is a genuine privacy and (maybe) security risk.
Advertising to the masses, through TV commercials or mass e-mails, is one thing. Retrieving personal info (think: Doubleclick web bugs) is another, even if their goal is just to send you "targeted" advertising.
Do you really want Joe Spammer to be in a position to know that you are currently online, with IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, just received an e-mail advertising "hot teen lesbian action", and clicked on the link within after only twenty seconds? That's easy for them to do. With a little more work, they could associate your e-mail address / cookies with your physical address and other personal info.
There is a fine line between advertising and spying. Its been crossed before, and web bugs will be used to cross it again.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
I'm waiting to see what happens when a Canadian person accesses an American site that violates these requirements.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Wow, it would be really funny to make it say #JOKE. Would really freak out somebody on acid. If its waterproof, you can pretend to catch it and make it say #JOKE2.
Just doing my part to speed things along.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
I know my target audience.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Man, just think how cool that blue screen will look powered by such a high-powered video processor.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
2001 will be very similar to 2000, except that everything will be slightly older.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
If the "hype" was too much, then it's not the media's fault. The fault would lie with the companies spreading fear to sell their products, such as code fixes or survival gear. And the capable but (hypothetically) wrong experts who told the media about the problem and the possible consequences. Even the experts didn't really know what would happen, so its unfair the expect the media to know.
Before you start thinking "nothing happened, so the media went overboard", try this:
If the sh*t had hit the fan, and the media had done any less hype-spreading, would you congratulate them for restraining themselves so well?
My mom is not a Karma whore!
I'm not criticising (long-range plans are a good thing), just curious.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
But I'm really just basing that on faith. It's a guess. Is all the money, and all the children's time, a good investment? Will it help create a self-sufficient society? Or are the children spending so much time at school that they cannot scrounge enough food to get by, with little long-term benefit?
It's quite nice to donate money to make ourselves feel better (or so I assume; I'm a cheap bastard), but how do we find out what really works best?
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Patent the idea of patenting painfully obvious and pre-existing business techniques as a way of screwing over competitors who cannot afford lawyers to prove that the patent is invalid.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Filtering is totally consistent with the Catholic way. If they didn't filter, they'd be hypocrits.
At worst, I might say "Shame on you, say twenty Hail Mary's" if they didn't make an honest effort to get half-decent filterware, or they are intentionally blocking (for instance) Protestant churches or general medical websites.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Unless you claim the material as your own, deep linking is still quite legal. Otherwise, old-fashioned copyright laws and business regulations will bite you.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Yes, serious users should have backup systems and should not be dependent on a single piece of hardware. But not all organizations or individuals can afford the backups. And it's always nice to have one more safety net.
Just think of it as a (theoretically) cheap way to make data integrity somewhat safer, without sacrificing useful uptime. Could be useful?
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Threads with lawyers.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Someone points out a goatse.cx link, and gets moderated down as a troll? I can see "-1, incoherent" or maybe "-1, you're just encouraging them", but it's not a troll.
Oh, don't forget to moderate me down as offtopic. Heaven forbid that criticism of the moderation system be tolerated by the moderators.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
My bad. The sarcasm tag must be broken. My point was that we cannot seem to handle the internet, so I'm skeptical as to how we can be a united world. I agree that the internet is not a simple thing, but it's nothing compared to the implications of a world government.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
The screaming people get together. Communities point at each other cry out "Get this obscene material off my internet!"
The communities band together. Countries elect officials who cry "Get this dangerous material off our internet!"
The countries finally notice each other, and realize that the internet is a global thing.
So countries start pointing at each other and screaming "You get off my internet!"
We're supposedly moving towards the one world government. We can't even deal with a simple little international network!
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Then why doesn't Congress pass a national blood alchohol level law, instead of coercing the states to do so? Or a bill mandating censorware? There are limits to the "interstate commerce" argument. A sufficiently liberal court might say that DUI laws fall into interstate commerce, but not so long ago the national speed limit struck down as outside federal authority.
Pretty much anything can be said to effect interstate commerce, but that doesn't mean the federal government has authority over everything it is not specifically denied.
It makes it sound like you're saying "I want to be allowed to recklessly endanger my fellow citizens" rather than "I want the governor and state legislature to decide what's dangerous and what's not."
And yet, most of us are saying exactly the second of those statements. I acknowledge that the federal government has done a lot of good by bending the rules, but it bothers me that the bending has happened sneakily. That concern applies to the good laws as well as the bad.
If America wants the advantages of a strong federal government, and is willing to accept the disadvantages, fine. The way to go about it is to pass a Constitutional Amendment, not to use taxation as a coercive tool.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
The federal government has a number of restrictions placed on its power. Certain powers (or domains of regulation) are reserved for the states.
The federal government is bypassing those restrictions.
They aren't even hiding it. The two "main" presidential candidates debated over how, exactly, each of them will bypass the restrictions. They have such wonderful plans based on skirting around the Constitution. And, I must admit, that some good has been accomplished by federal meddling in state business. However, I see a shift in power and in form of government that I want to call people's attention to. Personally, I usually feel that federal government is too powerful, but it is better that you disagree with me fully informed than agree with me blindly.
The federal government taxes states' citizens, then threatens to withold funding for "state run" programs from state which do not pass certain laws or meet certain requirements. They do this, in part, in order to bypass those restrictions on their authority.
Recently, president Clinton signed a law stating that any state which did not set a 0.08 blood alchohol level standard for DUI would lose (some) federal funding for highways. The DUI laws (and standards) are entirely in the states' authority, not the federal. In effect, the federal government has usurped a power reserved for the states.
"Usurped" may be too strong a word; each state can, after all, simply decline to meet that standard. They will lose federal funding, but they can simply fund the roads themselves.
Federal funding my ass. The fed will tax the citizens of the states who choose not to comply, then send that money out of that state and into another. They state cannot "make up for" the lost revenue; they can, at best, tax the citizens even more to fund the highway projects. But they still pay, either way.
The federal government is, in effect, saying "We want to have something happen, but we don't have the authority to pass a law to make it happen. So we are going to tax you to fund programs that you like, then later threaten to withold your own money from you unless you do what we want to you. Yeah, we know we're aren't supposed to be involved in this sort of thing, but the program is 'state run' and simply 'federally funded'."
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Just think, troll, one day my instinctive flinch away from the goatse.cx pictures will signal my computer to launch a DOS attack on the server!
My mom is not a Karma whore!
With eye tracking, software can notice that the user is looking all over the screen, probably trying to find the right menu item or command. This is a signal to pop up help or (on Windows machines) advertise instruction manuals for sale at Amazon. If you know what you're doing, turn that feature off. If you don't, your software is a lot friendlier with it on.
Maybe no more scrolling? Your computer tracks how quickly you read and moves the text by at that rate. This would be a boon for people with weak hands for whatever reason.
And, of course, aiming in Quake will never be the same after the "eyes of death" patch.
Anyway, cool tech.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Weird Al, long may he reign, always gets explicit permission to do parodies. The only exception was "Amish Paradise", and Al at least claims he was informed by his people that permission had been given.
And as far as "you should be ok", I'd revise to include "if you can afford a decent lawyer". Being sued can ruin you, whether or not you're right.
My mom is not a Karma whore!