I wrote a letter to my MP and MEP and all I basically got back was a nice parliamentary compliment slip and a letter with the lowest signal to noise ratio ever. They're all toeing the party line.
So thats when you gave up - eh? Sucker.
You have to challenge them to think about this, if they reply to you with the party line, phone them up, explain that you are familiar with the party position but that it is wrong - and politely ask for the opportunity to explain why.
I contacted my MEP, Avril Doyle (Ireland), and while she was previously unfamiliar with the issue, she actually became a strong opponent of software patents based on my and other's conversations with her.
Don't give up - if your political representatives don't listen, make them listen.
Its pessimistic cynics like you that are the real enemy, not the lobbiests - at least they are honest about which side they are on, but you hurt the side you claim to support.
The only way to guarantee failure here is not to try in the first place, yet that is exactly what your brand of pessimism encourages.
If we win this it will be no thanks to people like you.
FFII may or may not be successful in protecting the EU from software
patents (I hope they are), but at least they stand a good chance of
winning the "Least Tasteful (mis)use of Stylesheets" award for their
website;-)
(Seriously - their website looks like a brain haemorrhage, can
a web designer who cares about software patents and has some spare time
help them out here?!)
I suspect that claim might fall into a similar category as Gates'
alledged claim that we would never need more than 640k.
Consider someone in 1981 predicting that in 2004 a computer which then
costs thousands of dollars would cost just a few thousand dollars. They
might be minded to make a similar prediction, but it would miss the
point that people in 2004 would not be satisfied with such a computer,
and would want something orders of magnitude more powerful.
Today's top of the range PC might be less powerful than something that
costs $10 in 10 years, but you can be sure that by then people will want
computers vastly more powerful that still cost about the same as today's
desktop PCs.
Even the US supreme court recognises the importance of anonymity in political speech. The Federalist Papers, precursor to the US Constitution, was written anonymously. If its authors were forced to "own" what they wrote the British would have jailed them in a split second and Americans would probably still be paying taxes to the queen of England.
No respected researcher believes that the NSA, or any other agency, has the ability to crack secure keys using conventional algorithms (say 128 bit AES combined with 2048 bit RSA).
Perhaps, but then again, how many respected Nazi researchers believed that the allies had cracked the Enigma code?
Re:The real object of the game...
on
Google IPO Swami
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
This guy most certainly has a right to make a buck...
But should he be aided and abetted by Slashdot?
Whatever you feel, slashdot is playing a significant role in giving this effort publicity - and, to be honest, I am forced to ask whether this is stretching the "News for nerds" thing a bit far; Sure, Google may use Linux, and they may have a clever search algorithm, but does that justify blow by blow coverage of their efforts to raise more capital?
The existence of a patent can have a chilling effect on innovation, even if you don't use it (would you build your house on a remote-control landmine - even if the person that planted it promised they wouldn't press the button?).
The new Indian President, known only as "2K00l4Sk00l", in his first act of office has announced that the dating process will be replaced by a obfuscated C code competition.
He has also started construction of a massive sign extending right across the Indian sub-continent proclaiming "0wn3d" in large black lettering.
You are legally allowed to yield your fair use rights when entering into a contract, which everyone who uses the iTunes service does.
Not if they are drunk, or a child, or any one of the multitude of other things which make click-through agreements legally suspect.
How come all it seems to take is the mention of Apple, and all the things slashdotters normally hate, such as DRM, and restrictive click-through agreements that prohibit reverse engineering, suddenly become the best thing since sliced bread?
You'd be surprised how much the industry is sick of Java programmers, and on the lookout for good low-level engineers, or people who can do Forth or COBOL.
It's the current schooling system that allows me to keep a dot-com salary, so don't change anything for me thank you very much.
Hey - if you want to make money exploiting those poor bastards that still rely on Cobol - then good for you, but you are essentially in the same position as a drug dealer (ie. profitable, but not much job satisfaction).
Personally I would rather do interesting work for people that enthusiastically want my skills, rather than for those that grudgingly need those skills - irrespective of the monetary rewards.
By all means, keep antagonizing the best online music provider with these innovations.
Why don't you just marry Steve Jobs and get it over with?
Some people here have their tongues so far up Apple's ass that they are even willing to defend their DRM technology, and attack those that work around it.
Shame on anyone that is defending Apple here but didn't defend the MPAA's attack on DECSS.
If the patent was filed in '97 and you have prior art from "the early 90's", that's not decades: that's years.
Don't be an ass, when I say that it has been around for decades, I am referring to the idea, not the earliest concrete example I can find after not looking very hard.
This is just one example of the increasing threat that Kazaa, or more precicely the companies around it, pose to innovation in the P2P space.
Perhaps the best example is their aquisition of patent #5,978,791, filed in 1997, which claims to cover the retrieval of a file across a network using a hash of the file's contents.
Set aside, for a moment, that this technique is completley obvious and has been around for decades (the earliest reference I can find is the Xanadu project from the early 90s - but I haven't looked very hard), and consider the fact that these guys could use this patent to effectively shut down almost anyone that comes up with a P2P app that doesn't have the funding to fight them in court (since most if not all modern P2P apps use this technique).
The bottom line is that companies such as Brilliant Digital Entertainment (the same nice people that were behind the adware that Kazaa is now famous for) are almost as much a threat to P2P as the better known people everybody loves to hate.
If anyone is interested, here is a more detailed article I wrote on the subject.
I always wonder why interviewers don't respond sometimes by saying "You aren't ansering the question I asked." and if the interviewed person continues to avoid the question, cut them off and repeat "You aren't answering the question" until you get an answer to the question and not some prewritten canned response.
Because often the interviewers consider themselves lucky to be getting the interview, and don't want to risk giving the interviewed person the excuse to to end the interview.
The secret is to ask questions that are so simple they are difficult to dodge without being obvious.
Throughout the interview, Valenti demonstrates his ignorance and misunderstanding of fair use.
You can be sure that Valenti understands fair use at least as well as most of the slashdot crowd - the point is that his job is not to explain the truth to people, it is to explain the MPAA's truth to them, and this definitely does not involve explaining to people what their fair use rights are.
People like Valenti are paid to have certain beliefs, and they have no incentive to change those beliefs just because they happen to be wrong, moreover, expect Valenti to use every rhetorical technique in the book to obfuscate the real issues.
The value of this type of debate is to point out the inconsistencies in the MPAA position, but you can argue until hell freezes over, Valenti will never (publicly) agree with our position on fair use.
Re:Blame should be shared between coder and langua
on
PHP and SQL Security
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Have you ever used a stored procedure? You call the name of it, and that's it. You give the web server permission to call the stored procs.
So your solution to the problem that SQL encourages the mixing of code and data is to physically separate all the SQL out into separate files? And how many people do you think will be willing to contort their code in that manner to get around SQL's inherent insecurity? Judging by bugtraq - not very many.
The real solution is not to use a separate language and syntax for constructing queries.
Slashdot Mirror
I have found most MEPs to be quite responsive to email these days.
You have to challenge them to think about this, if they reply to you with the party line, phone them up, explain that you are familiar with the party position but that it is wrong - and politely ask for the opportunity to explain why.
I contacted my MEP, Avril Doyle (Ireland), and while she was previously unfamiliar with the issue, she actually became a strong opponent of software patents based on my and other's conversations with her.
Don't give up - if your political representatives don't listen, make them listen.
The only way to guarantee failure here is not to try in the first place, yet that is exactly what your brand of pessimism encourages.
If we win this it will be no thanks to people like you.
(Seriously - their website looks like a brain haemorrhage, can a web designer who cares about software patents and has some spare time help them out here?!)
Consider someone in 1981 predicting that in 2004 a computer which then costs thousands of dollars would cost just a few thousand dollars. They might be minded to make a similar prediction, but it would miss the point that people in 2004 would not be satisfied with such a computer, and would want something orders of magnitude more powerful.
Today's top of the range PC might be less powerful than something that costs $10 in 10 years, but you can be sure that by then people will want computers vastly more powerful that still cost about the same as today's desktop PCs.
Brown's worst crime is confusing "Linux" with "GNU/Linux" ;-)
In what way is this "News for Nerds"?
Personally I would rather prevent it in the first place.
Even the US supreme court recognises the importance of anonymity in political speech. The Federalist Papers, precursor to the US Constitution, was written anonymously. If its authors were forced to "own" what they wrote the British would have jailed them in a split second and Americans would probably still be paying taxes to the queen of England.
Whatever you feel, slashdot is playing a significant role in giving this effort publicity - and, to be honest, I am forced to ask whether this is stretching the "News for nerds" thing a bit far; Sure, Google may use Linux, and they may have a clever search algorithm, but does that justify blow by blow coverage of their efforts to raise more capital?
That isn't to say that the patent isn't bullsh1t, most software patents are.
The existence of a patent can have a chilling effect on innovation, even if you don't use it (would you build your house on a remote-control landmine - even if the person that planted it promised they wouldn't press the button?).
He has also started construction of a massive sign extending right across the Indian sub-continent proclaiming "0wn3d" in large black lettering.
How come all it seems to take is the mention of Apple, and all the things slashdotters normally hate, such as DRM, and restrictive click-through agreements that prohibit reverse engineering, suddenly become the best thing since sliced bread?
Personally I would rather do interesting work for people that enthusiastically want my skills, rather than for those that grudgingly need those skills - irrespective of the monetary rewards.
Internet2 + P2P = Internet1 ;-)
Some people here have their tongues so far up Apple's ass that they are even willing to defend their DRM technology, and attack those that work around it.
Shame on anyone that is defending Apple here but didn't defend the MPAA's attack on DECSS.
Perhaps the best example is their aquisition of patent #5,978,791, filed in 1997, which claims to cover the retrieval of a file across a network using a hash of the file's contents.
Set aside, for a moment, that this technique is completley obvious and has been around for decades (the earliest reference I can find is the Xanadu project from the early 90s - but I haven't looked very hard), and consider the fact that these guys could use this patent to effectively shut down almost anyone that comes up with a P2P app that doesn't have the funding to fight them in court (since most if not all modern P2P apps use this technique).
The bottom line is that companies such as Brilliant Digital Entertainment (the same nice people that were behind the adware that Kazaa is now famous for) are almost as much a threat to P2P as the better known people everybody loves to hate.
If anyone is interested, here is a more detailed article I wrote on the subject.
The secret is to ask questions that are so simple they are difficult to dodge without being obvious.
People like Valenti are paid to have certain beliefs, and they have no incentive to change those beliefs just because they happen to be wrong, moreover, expect Valenti to use every rhetorical technique in the book to obfuscate the real issues.
The value of this type of debate is to point out the inconsistencies in the MPAA position, but you can argue until hell freezes over, Valenti will never (publicly) agree with our position on fair use.
The real solution is not to use a separate language and syntax for constructing queries.