Could the argument be you wouldn't sue the Infrastucture would you? Foe example if a TV program is broadcast you wouldn't sue the supplier of the satellite, or the company that provides the cable - you'd sue the publisher.
But the Jury nullification can do just that (overturn a law for society) - it can bring about far reaching reforms that could still be with us in 500 years time.
But as you say, the majority won't - OJ Simpson not being convicted didn't change the murder laws, but Penn not being convicted resulted in the right of trial juries to decide cases according to their convictions.
But this case starts to point to the fact that your thought can be owned. From what I remember the argument was "My thought are my own" - but the result was "Your thoughts in your employers time are not your own, and you can be ordered to disclose them".
How long before thoughts can be read, or at least the electricty produced, and this electricity converted into some readable format? Then you won't even have to disclose your thought, they'll be taken from you.
Of course, a thought in an instance will be different from a thought in another instance, even if you think you are thinking about the same thing. Outside influences will change those thoughts - even if very slightly.
I've still not read it, these scientists would have been professional and such a simple rebuttal would probably have been looked at in depth (or height).
I didn't read the article - I mean really not too many people do, you're very nearly unique:-)
But, there are Glaciers near the equator now. For example Kilimanjaro and Qori Kalis in South America.
If rocks from under these were picked up 600 million years in the future and following the same process, wouldn't it then be safe to assume that as glaciers were at the equator, there must have been glaciers around the world?
Strange isn't it, I could stand up in front of 1000 people and make an off the cuff speech - others can use it, copy it, adapt it, even give the same speech and claim it as their own.
But, if I write that speech down, then make it, then you can't. You might be able to use "fair use" quoting, but you couldn't give that same speech without infrining my copyright.
Hasn't there been a case where an employers has "invented" a new idea, hasn't written it down (or has destroyed the documentation) and then been taken to court by his employer and ordered by a judge to divulge the information?
I think it's been covered on Slashdot before, but not recently.
So, in the current regime, a court can order you to divulge your thoughts. So they can be owned.
I suppose it all depends what a service pack is there to do - even going back to nt3, service packs have also included "increased" functionality.
If MS are not going to introduce any new functionality, it could be argued that they don't need a service pack as all the patches are available - either as downloads or as "live" updates.
Corporate customers probably have a build process that already includes these updates - SUS/Bigfix or whatever so it wouldn't effect them. System builders will integrate the fixes in their image, so it wouldn't affect them. The only people affected will be those that like to rebuild thier computers often - like most of the world, and the solution will be - upgrade to Vista!
The first "precedent" was set with an Italian (I think) glass maker. They exported thier goods to an Eastern European country, another company then imported them back into the EU and was selling them for less than what the orginal glass maker sold them. This went to court, and it was eventually decided that items protected by Intelectual Property could not be imported without the consent of the orginal manufacturer.
The big one for the UK was Levi vs Tesco. Tesco (a big supermarket in the UK) was importaing Levi jeans from the US and seeling them for less than half of the price that Levi would let other sellers sell at. There was an interesting bit of this case where two pairs of jeans were held up, both from the same factory in Turkey. One was imported oficially, one on the grey market. Levi said the second was a "pirate" good, as it was not imported by them.
Anyway, Tesco lost. The EU is okay with importing between different EU countries - but from outside the EU it's not allowed.
Of course, as an individual I could go to a US/Asian/African place and buy whatever I wanted and import it. It's just as a company you can't buy to sell on.
But from what I've read from the article, you can't use the web... as the transaction takes place in the EU, it's got to follow EU law.
It wasn't bad luck, it was a design flaw - certain internal cards did not have the correct protection mechinism, and with SP2, because that protection mechinism was not availabe it disabled the cards.
I was trying to point out that the people with these laptops would need to run SP1, which directly contridicted the experts comments of "Little Reason to Run SP2".
There was a case of that in the UK, an architect was bribing officials - one of the reasons they managed to "get him" was that he recorded all his bribes and used them for tax deductions.
The Treasury said that yes, that is correct - bribes are tax deductable if they have the correct reciepts.
Strangely it never used to be like this - I remember walking into Boots and Whsmith and seeing rows of commodore 64s. Even places like debenhams had computer areas.
Infact at the time there were no "big" computer only shops. Really only small independent shops or stores that sold other things and had computer departments.
Commodore64 Spectrum Amiga The PC wasn't even on the horizon as a gaming machine.
I don't think I would have put any of those below the consoles that were available 20 years ago.
Even 15 years ago (1991) the Amiga (well in the UK, and Germany) ruled the gaming roost.
Maybe 10 years ago you could argue that - the orginal PS vs the first Command and Conquer. Doom had boosted everyones hardware specs and DuneII had laid the path for C&C.
I'm always curious about "sequels" on these lists - as most of the time the orginal is the "revolutionary" game, and the sequel is usually just an update, more polished, better controls etc.
But also, there never seems to be any limits to these lists - maybe people should put some in. For example a game could be absolutly groundbreaking fo the time, but should it be on the "Best Ever" list?
A classic example is elite, for it's time it was a fantastic game - but if we took that game and just updated the presentation to todays standards (The game stays the same but graphics, sounds, cut scenes added etc) would it still be a classic game?
But what other way - if you could get a modern game, and have the same "gameplay" in a 1985 style, would it be as good? Could you strip the modern day presentation from a new game and still have a "classic"?
Anyeay, as always these lists are always subjective, and newer games take most of the limelight - generally because they are still fresh in the mind, but I just thought I would do mine...
In no Order
Dune II - A fantastic RTS, could be argued as the first RTS that combined all the elements of a modern one. Oddley the orginal "Dune" wasn't a RTS, but a type of adventure game. Championship Manager - I still break this out now and again, although it's strange seeing some players as 18 that are retired now.. Sensible Soccer - A fast and frentic arcade game, simple to pick up, difficult to master CIV - Yep the original (on the Amiga no less). It even had the ability to have another city decide to join you if you were more powerful than them. *Mud - Not one in particular(Although BatMUD was my vice), but the hours you could waste on these multi player games was fantastic.
You can probably see from my list the distict lack or FPS - I enjoyed Doom, Halflife, system shock and most others I've played, but really when it comes down to it whats classic about running about a maze, collecting items and shooting monsters:-)
For a home computer that could be fine, but once you get into a corporate environment then how would it be policed? How would thnigs like licences be dealt with?
If your an open office shop, some employee brings in a "dodgy" copy of office and install it to his user area.
And as far as a sand box goes, how much of a sandbox? Should it have access to the network? What about to sound cards and video cards?
Surely its the other way round? Any sensible system should not allow a user to install anything unless they have the specific rights to do so - whether "administrative rights", or "Install rights" or "Super User" rights.
It's really quite scary (to me anyway) that a user could sit down, install password crackers, proxy avoidance, file sharing programs and whatever else they wanted.
Of course I may be coming from a different perspective to what you have written - and it certainly is a pain with windows programs being written to run from exotic locations, or need elevated permissions on folders for files in system folders.
In fact in windows there are options to stop executibles from running anywhere else except the "program files" folders.
Have a look at http://www.curriculumonline.gov.uk/Default.htm - and then be amazed when you see how many exotic programs there are that teachers say are "fundemental" to their subject.
And then cry at how many don't support silent installs, and do funny things to the registry or store files outside of "program files", or use old versions of flash so that the new security functions cause them to break or need vesions x y or z of some java virtaul machine, or won't work on a network or or or or
There was somthing similar to this in the 1970's in the UK - basically an architect was bribing MPs, police officers, health authorities and civil servants.
He was eventually caught and arrested for corruption - they went through his books, and he was claiming tax back on the bribes (so he had documentation of everything he had commited).
When asked, the Inland Revenue said it was a legitimate business expence and tax could be claimed back on it (although there was a £700,000 tax bill that his company had to pay for other matters).
But anyway, income is taxed, it shouldn't matter if the income is "dirty" or not.
BT have done teh same with text messages
on
Talking iPods
·
· Score: 1
There is a service that BT supply in the UK that allows a mobile text message to be sent to a normal landline phone. And guess who they have got to do the voice? The Dr! Well Tom baker anyway.
Which means 2bit radio dejays can have hours of fun texting rude words to it.
Lord Templeman : "...I do not agree that a home copier commits a criminal offence. By the Performers' Protection Acts 1958 to 1972 it is an offence knowingly to make a record of a performance of literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work without the consent in writing of the performers, but it is a defence to prove that the record was made for private and domestic use only."
This is the most interesting comment he made...
"From the point of view of society the present position is lamentable. Millions of breaches of the law must be committed by home copiers every year. Some home copiers may break the law in ignorance, despite extensive publicity and warning notices on records, tapes and films. Some home copiers may break the law because they estimate that the chances of detection are non-existent. Some home copiers may consider that the entertainemnt and recording industry already exhibit all the characteristics of undesirable monopoly, lavish expenses, extravagant earnings and exhorbitant profits, and the blank tape is the only restraint on further increases in the prices of records. Whatever the reason for home copying, the beat of Sergeant Pepper and the soaring sounds of the Miserere from unlawful copies are more powerful than law-abiding instincts or twinges of conscience. A law which is treated with such contempt should be amended or repealed."
CBS Songs Ltd and others v Amstrad Consumer Electronics plc and another [1988] 2 All ER 484, a useful read!
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, thats you're problem. You're trying to use logic against a religion. It doesn't work like that.
a) If evil happens, it's due to the fallibility of Humans, or the interfrence and corruption by a "bad" power.
b) If good happens it's due to God.
So, if you have a car crash with a drunk driver that paralysis you and kills your family, thats a human problem.
If you help an old person across the road, that's god at work and he should get the credit.
Sooo, anything Good = God, anything Bad = nothing to do with God. Except if you're a bad perosn and are being punished.
Could the argument be you wouldn't sue the Infrastucture would you? Foe example if a TV program is broadcast you wouldn't sue the supplier of the satellite, or the company that provides the cable - you'd sue the publisher.
>> Linus Torvalds wrote it to learn about the 386 processor so he would never have written it
Well, well, I always thought it was becasue he tried to use minix (or whatever) and it wasn't very good. Shows how little I know.
Slashdot's amazing, you learn somthing new everyday.
But the Jury nullification can do just that (overturn a law for society) - it can bring about far reaching reforms that could still be with us in 500 years time.
But as you say, the majority won't - OJ Simpson not being convicted didn't change the murder laws, but Penn not being convicted resulted in the right of trial juries to decide cases according to their convictions.
I know you don't like Wikipedia, but have a quick look at this ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
But this case starts to point to the fact that your thought can be owned. From what I remember the argument was "My thought are my own" - but the result was "Your thoughts in your employers time are not your own, and you can be ordered to disclose them".
How long before thoughts can be read, or at least the electricty produced, and this electricity converted into some readable format? Then you won't even have to disclose your thought, they'll be taken from you.
Of course, a thought in an instance will be different from a thought in another instance, even if you think you are thinking about the same thing. Outside influences will change those thoughts - even if very slightly.
I've still not read it, these scientists would have been professional and such a simple rebuttal would probably have been looked at in depth (or height).
I didn't read the article - I mean really not too many people do, you're very nearly unique :-)
But, there are Glaciers near the equator now. For example Kilimanjaro and Qori Kalis in South America.
If rocks from under these were picked up 600 million years in the future and following the same process, wouldn't it then be safe to assume that as glaciers were at the equator, there must have been glaciers around the world?
Strange isn't it, I could stand up in front of 1000 people and make an off the cuff speech - others can use it, copy it, adapt it, even give the same speech and claim it as their own.
But, if I write that speech down, then make it, then you can't. You might be able to use "fair use" quoting, but you couldn't give that same speech without infrining my copyright.
Hasn't there been a case where an employers has "invented" a new idea, hasn't written it down (or has destroyed the documentation) and then been taken to court by his employer and ordered by a judge to divulge the information?
I think it's been covered on Slashdot before, but not recently.
So, in the current regime, a court can order you to divulge your thoughts. So they can be owned.
I suppose it all depends what a service pack is there to do - even going back to nt3, service packs have also included "increased" functionality.
If MS are not going to introduce any new functionality, it could be argued that they don't need a service pack as all the patches are available - either as downloads or as "live" updates.
Corporate customers probably have a build process that already includes these updates - SUS/Bigfix or whatever so it wouldn't effect them. System builders will integrate the fixes in their image, so it wouldn't affect them. The only people affected will be those that like to rebuild thier computers often - like most of the world, and the solution will be - upgrade to Vista!
It been an issue in the EU/UK for a far while.
... as the transaction takes place in the EU, it's got to follow EU law.
The first "precedent" was set with an Italian (I think) glass maker. They exported thier goods to an Eastern European country, another company then imported them back into the EU and was selling them for less than what the orginal glass maker sold them. This went to court, and it was eventually decided that items protected by Intelectual Property could not be imported without the consent of the orginal manufacturer.
The big one for the UK was Levi vs Tesco. Tesco (a big supermarket in the UK) was importaing Levi jeans from the US and seeling them for less than half of the price that Levi would let other sellers sell at. There was an interesting bit of this case where two pairs of jeans were held up, both from the same factory in Turkey. One was imported oficially, one on the grey market. Levi said the second was a "pirate" good, as it was not imported by them.
Anyway, Tesco lost. The EU is okay with importing between different EU countries - but from outside the EU it's not allowed.
Of course, as an individual I could go to a US/Asian/African place and buy whatever I wanted and import it. It's just as a company you can't buy to sell on.
But from what I've read from the article, you can't use the web
It wasn't bad luck, it was a design flaw - certain internal cards did not have the correct protection mechinism, and with SP2, because that protection mechinism was not availabe it disabled the cards.
I was trying to point out that the people with these laptops would need to run SP1, which directly contridicted the experts comments of "Little Reason to Run SP2".
Well done in getting your card to work with SP2.
There was a case of that in the UK, an architect was bribing officials - one of the reasons they managed to "get him" was that he recorded all his bribes and used them for tax deductions.
, 00.html - Looks like even if a Tax officer finds the bribe, they are not allowed to inform the police.
The Treasury said that yes, that is correct - bribes are tax deductable if they have the correct reciepts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,393135
> 'There's little reason for anyone to still be running SP1; SP2 contained a range of improvements to XP's security.'
Except some of the wireless cards in laptops won't run under SP2 (Luckily we've replaced ours). Where do these "experts" pull thier quotes from.
In 1992 Japan had soldiers in Cyprus, protectng the North/South from the South/North.
I think that was thier first outside deployment since WW2.
Strangely it never used to be like this - I remember walking into Boots and Whsmith and seeing rows of commodore 64s. Even places like debenhams had computer areas.
Infact at the time there were no "big" computer only shops. Really only small independent shops or stores that sold other things and had computer departments.
20 years ago? 1986.
Commodore64
Spectrum
Amiga
The PC wasn't even on the horizon as a gaming machine.
I don't think I would have put any of those below the consoles that were available 20 years ago.
Even 15 years ago (1991) the Amiga (well in the UK, and Germany) ruled the gaming roost.
Maybe 10 years ago you could argue that - the orginal PS vs the first Command and Conquer. Doom had boosted everyones hardware specs and DuneII had laid the path for C&C.
I'm always curious about "sequels" on these lists - as most of the time the orginal is the "revolutionary" game, and the sequel is usually just an update, more polished, better controls etc.
...
:-)
But also, there never seems to be any limits to these lists - maybe people should put some in. For example a game could be absolutly groundbreaking fo the time, but should it be on the "Best Ever" list?
A classic example is elite, for it's time it was a fantastic game - but if we took that game and just updated the presentation to todays standards (The game stays the same but graphics, sounds, cut scenes added etc) would it still be a classic game?
But what other way - if you could get a modern game, and have the same "gameplay" in a 1985 style, would it be as good? Could you strip the modern day presentation from a new game and still have a "classic"?
Anyeay, as always these lists are always subjective, and newer games take most of the limelight - generally because they are still fresh in the mind, but I just thought I would do mine
In no Order
Dune II - A fantastic RTS, could be argued as the first RTS that combined all the elements of a modern one. Oddley the orginal "Dune" wasn't a RTS, but a type of adventure game.
Championship Manager - I still break this out now and again, although it's strange seeing some players as 18 that are retired now..
Sensible Soccer - A fast and frentic arcade game, simple to pick up, difficult to master
CIV - Yep the original (on the Amiga no less). It even had the ability to have another city decide to join you if you were more powerful than them.
*Mud - Not one in particular(Although BatMUD was my vice), but the hours you could waste on these multi player games was fantastic.
You can probably see from my list the distict lack or FPS - I enjoyed Doom, Halflife, system shock and most others I've played, but really when it comes down to it whats classic about running about a maze, collecting items and shooting monsters
For a home computer that could be fine, but once you get into a corporate environment then how would it be policed? How would thnigs like licences be dealt with?
If your an open office shop, some employee brings in a "dodgy" copy of office and install it to his user area.
And as far as a sand box goes, how much of a sandbox? Should it have access to the network? What about to sound cards and video cards?
Surely its the other way round? Any sensible system should not allow a user to install anything unless they have the specific rights to do so - whether "administrative rights", or "Install rights" or "Super User" rights.
It's really quite scary (to me anyway) that a user could sit down, install password crackers, proxy avoidance, file sharing programs and whatever else they wanted.
Of course I may be coming from a different perspective to what you have written - and it certainly is a pain with windows programs being written to run from exotic locations, or need elevated permissions on folders for files in system folders.
In fact in windows there are options to stop executibles from running anywhere else except the "program files" folders.
Hmm, except thats not all they want.
Have a look at http://www.curriculumonline.gov.uk/Default.htm - and then be amazed when you see how many exotic programs there are that teachers say are "fundemental" to their subject.
And then cry at how many don't support silent installs, and do funny things to the registry or store files outside of "program files", or use old versions of flash so that the new security functions cause them to break or need vesions x y or z of some java virtaul machine, or won't work on a network or or or or
There was somthing similar to this in the 1970's in the UK - basically an architect was bribing MPs, police officers, health authorities and civil servants.
He was eventually caught and arrested for corruption - they went through his books, and he was claiming tax back on the bribes (so he had documentation of everything he had commited).
When asked, the Inland Revenue said it was a legitimate business expence and tax could be claimed back on it (although there was a £700,000 tax bill that his company had to pay for other matters).
But anyway, income is taxed, it shouldn't matter if the income is "dirty" or not.
There is a service that BT supply in the UK that allows a mobile text message to be sent to a normal landline phone. And guess who they have got to do the voice? The Dr! Well Tom baker anyway.
Which means 2bit radio dejays can have hours of fun texting rude words to it.
Lord Templeman : " ...I do not agree that a home copier commits a criminal offence. By the Performers' Protection Acts 1958 to 1972 it is an offence knowingly to make a record of a performance of literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work without the consent in writing of the performers, but it is a defence to prove that the record was made for private and domestic use only."
...
This is the most interesting comment he made
"From the point of view of society the present position is lamentable. Millions of breaches of the law must be committed by home copiers every year. Some home copiers may break the law in ignorance, despite extensive publicity and warning notices on records, tapes and films. Some home copiers may break the law because they estimate that the chances of detection are non-existent. Some home copiers may consider that the entertainemnt and recording industry already exhibit all the characteristics of undesirable monopoly, lavish expenses, extravagant earnings and exhorbitant profits, and the blank tape is the only restraint on further increases in the prices of records. Whatever the reason for home copying, the beat of Sergeant Pepper and the soaring sounds of the Miserere from unlawful copies are more powerful than law-abiding instincts or twinges of conscience. A law which is treated with such contempt should be amended or repealed."
CBS Songs Ltd and others v Amstrad Consumer Electronics plc and another [1988] 2 All ER 484, a useful read!