Most commercial license agreements are a joke, software developers use them because everyone else does - I mean, why not include obscure clauses about getting your user's first born child - they will almost never read them.
There should be a law against frivolous license agreement clauses, deliberate use of obscure language, and misleading statements about people's legal obligations. Why isn't it fraud to trick people into agreeing to things by deliberately hiding them in mountains of legal text? This is an abuse of the entire concept of a legal contract.
It's not about open source, although there is a similarity in the principle of open and free exchange of ideas.
You are right, I am concerned that these protests will devote too much attention to Open Source software, ignoring the fact that the small to medium commercial software industry will be hit hard too - this is much more relevant to the MEPs as when profit making companies are being hurt that means less taxes, and less jobs.
My advice to the protestors is not to make this whole thing about free software - make it clear that all software production is endangered by this.
Maybe I'm missing the point, and don't think I'm taking the MPAA's side, but what do we care about the quality of the cryptography being used in DVD's?
The cryptography (if any) is for their (imagined) benefit, not ours. They could use ROT-13 as their cryptography, and as long as it plays, I don't care.
The problem is that when Intellectual Property law can be used to artifically prop-up flawed encryption schemes then it discourages the creation of crypto schemes that don't require dumb laws to support them.
Which is better - having secure airports, or making it illegal to talk about the flaws in airport security?
The problem with free speech laws is that how do you determine where to stop, what line is enough, or do you jsut allow all free speech? Threats? Allegations about your sex life with sheep?
You miss the point - the real question is how far are you willing to accept the inevitable compromize of "good" forms of speech to prevent or discourage "bad" forms of speech.
I mean, everyone thinks that wife-beating is terrible, yet even though forced installation of cameras in people's homes would prevent it, people would never accept that.
Once they escape, they're public knowledge, end of story.
IANAL, but IIRC the law still tries to put the toothpaste back in the tube if the original disclosure was a breach of trade-secret law (such as a violation of an NDA or license agreement), no matter how widely that toothpaste has been spread around.
For this reason trade secret law is, in many ways, much more powerful (and restrictive to the general population) than copyright.
The movie industry's right to prevent fair use of DVDs outranks our right to know when we are being sold flawed cryptography?
CSS does not prevent people from copying CDs illegally, what it does prevent is perfectly legal uses of DVDs such as playing them in countries other than that in which they were sold, and playing them on operating systems for which CSS decoders might not exist. Now our government wants to compromize the 1st amendment to defend their right to stop us from doing something that our laws specifically entitle us to do?
All laws which seek to limit two or more people's ability to willingly share ideas and information will ultimately be seen as being just as rediculous as witch burning or the Spanish Inquisition. Our right to effectively regulate our governments, which requires that we have free and open access to knowledge, ideas, and information, is being sold off based on the wrong-headed dogma that treating everything as "property" will improve efficiency.
Having said all that, I think we should welcome this ruling - since it is perhaps one of the clearest examples of how the 1st Amendment is being corroded by laws which increasingly serve only to stifle innovation and prop up monopolies to the detriment of science and the useful arts.
Does it irritate anyone else when people try to further compress already compressed media files? I mean - they should have a compulsory information theory test before people are allowed to use tools like zip and gzip.
(For those that don't know what I am talking about, the BitTorrent file is zipped).
The problem is that DNS is trying to be Google
on
DNSSEC: Good Enough?
·
· Score: 1
URLs were never intended to be things that people could guess off the top of their heads based on what they were looking for - and they are really bad at it.
URLs should provide a unique way to identify information, but the process of finding the URL that someone is looking for should be left up to those that specialize in this - namely web search engines.
With Freenet - information is identified by complex URLs which allow the user to guarantee that the information is what the user expects it to be. The problem of finding the URL you want is left to freesites that specialize in this.
Surely they had a responsibility to announce this compromize as soon as it was discovered so that those that had downloaded potentially compromized files could take appropriate action immediately?
The hitrate has died down enough that I think it might be able to handle it - I switched it back to full-functionality about 5 minutes ago and it seems to be coping - lets hope this continues (it is downhill from here - right?).
Pardon my ignorance, but how is this different than entering my search term, identifying the topics that I don't want to see, then excluding them and searching again? I do this frequenly with google, like if I am searching for 'mushrooms', but I'm not interested in tripping, I can add '-magic -psilocybe' or '+morel' or whatever.
It is different in that it automates the process of identifying which keywords should be excluded, rather than relying on the user to figure it out for themselves (which is often non-trivial).
Ok, it is back up after I killed the "whittling" engine - feel free to play with the UI, but it won't do anything intelligent.
This was more intended as a proof of concept - rather than an all-out replacement for Google. I was frustrated with the way that Google works really well if you are looking for something easily defined and-or well known, but trying to find something obscure that was "masked" by more popular sites with similar keywards could be a real PITA. Whittlebit is designed to automate the manual process of trying to refine your keyword choice to get the search results you want.
The server is down - it was totally ill-equipped to handle a slashdotting unfortunately, I was hoping it would get some testing, but this is a bit much;-)
As a poor substitute to being able to play with it (try bookmarking whittlebit.com and coming back in a day or two) I will try to answer people's questions. For the moment - here is the blurb from the front page:
What is WhittleBit?
Have you ever searched for something and wished you could tell the search engine
that it was totally on the wrong track and it should try again? Well now you
can! WhittleBit works much
like most other search engines, except it can help you to refine your searches
by allowing you to give positive or negative feedback on each search result.
Simply rate the search results by clicking on the
"thumbs up" or "thumbs down" buttons
then click on Whittle to get a refined set of search results based on
your feedback.
Tips
Even if you visit another site and then return, WhittleBit will remember your
search query until you explicitly click the "New Search" button.
You can either rate a search result on the results page itself, or visit the
page and rate it using the buttons at the top of the page. You
will return to the WhittleBit search results after clicking one of the buttons.
WhittleBit requires a browser which supports "Cookies" and "Frames" such
as Mozilla or
Internet Explorer.
participatory journalism with collaborative editing in action.
Yes, and with a healthy leftist bias - the point is to filter out such bias to get closer to what, say, the BBC tries to be (and for the most part, IMHO, succeeds in being).
Removing bias from collaboratively edited sites
on
Participatory Journalism
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Recently I wrote an article on how one might create a collaborative editorial system where the personal bias of the editors could be filtered out. Anyone interested can check it out here.
Personally, I'm all for licensing computer users. Take a simple test that covers performing basic tasks, with an internet option covering attachment safety, child observation, and self-restraint when it comes to those pr0n sites. No license?
Why stop there? Why not require that people have a license to communicate - and to get that license they have to pass a test designed to ensure that they don't "abuse" their communication rights - like, say, criticising the wrong political party.
The number of times it has been clear that the person providing me tech support has no real understanding of what they are doing is amazing. They make me follow steps that are totally unnecessary, and that I have told them are unnecessary. Often, the only way to make any progress is to get bumped up to second level support, or even third level.
Before tech support people rant about the lack of knowledge of their users, remember that it isn't the user's job to be an expert in use of the software or hardware - but it is their job, and it is one they often fail at.
If I didn't know better I would say that this entire press release is a troll - and a pretty unconvincing troll at that:
We view IBM's counterclaim filing today as an effort to distract attention from its flawed Linux business model.
Flawed business model? Relative to what - SCO's ingenious strategy of using rediculous claims of IP infringement to pump and dump their shares while refusing to publicly disclose what the IP infringement actually is? Yup - SCO knows all about flawed business models.
If IBM were serious about addressing the real problems with Linux, it would offer full customer indemnification and move away from the GPL license.
Guh?! Since when is the GPL license the problem - even if SCO's claims did prove to be true? And how exactly does IBM "move away" from the software license under which their primary operating system is distributed?
As the stakes continue to rise in the Linux battles, it becomes increasingly clear that the core issue is bigger than SCO (Nasdaq: SCOX - News), Red Hat, or even IBM
What - that a company can get away with lying about Linux in order to pump up their share price? Yeah, that is a problem that is bigger than SCO, Red Hat, and IBM, but perhaps they won't get away with it after all.
The core issue is about the value of intellectual property in an Internet age.
Would this be the same Internet that largely relies on Free Software?
In a strange alliance, IBM and the Free Software Foundation have lined up on the same side of this argument in support of the GPL.
Normally when different groups line up on the same side of an issue it suggests that there is something to it.
SCO has shipped these products for many years, in some cases for nearly two decades, and this is the first time that IBM has ever raised an issue about patent infringement in these products.
And how long was SCO shipping Linux without raising an issue about IP infringement?
These guys have some serious nerve - I hope they get put behind bars for this crap.
As an Irish citizen living in the US - I have decided that it is time to leave this country - it is starting to look, smell, and act as Germany did during the 1930s. I wish you Americans luck in regaining civilized justice in your broken country, if not, I hope that the EU will be accepting of political refugees from this brave but failed experiment.
Slashdot Mirror
There should be a law against frivolous license agreement clauses, deliberate use of obscure language, and misleading statements about people's legal obligations. Why isn't it fraud to trick people into agreeing to things by deliberately hiding them in mountains of legal text? This is an abuse of the entire concept of a legal contract.
My advice to the protestors is not to make this whole thing about free software - make it clear that all software production is endangered by this.
Which is better - having secure airports, or making it illegal to talk about the flaws in airport security?
I mean, everyone thinks that wife-beating is terrible, yet even though forced installation of cameras in people's homes would prevent it, people would never accept that.
For this reason trade secret law is, in many ways, much more powerful (and restrictive to the general population) than copyright.
CSS does not prevent people from copying CDs illegally, what it does prevent is perfectly legal uses of DVDs such as playing them in countries other than that in which they were sold, and playing them on operating systems for which CSS decoders might not exist. Now our government wants to compromize the 1st amendment to defend their right to stop us from doing something that our laws specifically entitle us to do?
All laws which seek to limit two or more people's ability to willingly share ideas and information will ultimately be seen as being just as rediculous as witch burning or the Spanish Inquisition. Our right to effectively regulate our governments, which requires that we have free and open access to knowledge, ideas, and information, is being sold off based on the wrong-headed dogma that treating everything as "property" will improve efficiency.
Having said all that, I think we should welcome this ruling - since it is perhaps one of the clearest examples of how the 1st Amendment is being corroded by laws which increasingly serve only to stifle innovation and prop up monopolies to the detriment of science and the useful arts.
"How many companies does it take to replace the light-bulb?"
(For those that don't know what I am talking about, the BitTorrent file is zipped).
URLs should provide a unique way to identify information, but the process of finding the URL that someone is looking for should be left up to those that specialize in this - namely web search engines.
With Freenet - information is identified by complex URLs which allow the user to guarantee that the information is what the user expects it to be. The problem of finding the URL you want is left to freesites that specialize in this.
Surely they had a responsibility to announce this compromize as soon as it was discovered so that those that had downloaded potentially compromized files could take appropriate action immediately?
The hitrate has died down enough that I think it might be able to handle it - I switched it back to full-functionality about 5 minutes ago and it seems to be coping - lets hope this continues (it is downhill from here - right?).
Does this "search engine" allow users to give feedback on search results? Yes. Google doesn't.
Remember when people said that about Yahoo, or Netscape, or any of the other market dominating companies that were eventually replaced?This was more intended as a proof of concept - rather than an all-out replacement for Google. I was frustrated with the way that Google works really well if you are looking for something easily defined and-or well known, but trying to find something obscure that was "masked" by more popular sites with similar keywards could be a real PITA. Whittlebit is designed to automate the manual process of trying to refine your keyword choice to get the search results you want.
As a poor substitute to being able to play with it (try bookmarking whittlebit.com and coming back in a day or two) I will try to answer people's questions. For the moment - here is the blurb from the front page:
- Ian Clarke, creator of WhittleBitRecently I wrote an article on how one might create a collaborative editorial system where the personal bias of the editors could be filtered out. Anyone interested can check it out here.
Great idea, now go get your jack-boots fitted.
Before tech support people rant about the lack of knowledge of their users, remember that it isn't the user's job to be an expert in use of the software or hardware - but it is their job, and it is one they often fail at.
These guys have some serious nerve - I hope they get put behind bars for this crap.
As an Irish citizen living in the US - I have decided that it is time to leave this country - it is starting to look, smell, and act as Germany did during the 1930s. I wish you Americans luck in regaining civilized justice in your broken country, if not, I hope that the EU will be accepting of political refugees from this brave but failed experiment.