Damn straight, and I rule with a BOFH's iron fist. Anyone abusing the portion of the network under my control will know my wrath. That is the role of the network admin, I care about the network, very little about the actual traffic passing over it. I track and report my share of spammers and other network abusers to their network admins, who in a perfect world would be just as anal in policing their portions of the network. When we are doing our job right the network flows, the users are happy and we read slashdot.
It is when asshats and other assorted defectives get control over substantial portions of the network things get messy. Unfortunatly us BOFH types no longer control the backbone so can no longer cut off sites that refuse to enforce descpline on their users.
> It is about time we (the collective geeks) do something real about spam.
The only people who can 'do' something about spam are the ones who run the backbone. When they decide doing the "wink wink nudge nudge" game of loudly proclaiming their hatred of spam and signing pink contracts with the spammers isn't profitable anymore spam will end. If all of the major providers started enforcing their published AUP/TOS against their downstream customers spam would vanish in short order. Yes a few examples would have to be made, China and Korea would probably be booted off the network for a week or two, but it would end. Windows zombies would start getting detected and shutdown in hours instead of the current weeks to never. In short, spam is condoned at the highest levels of the network and will continue until that changes.
> Spammers should be shot.
Ok, I can't officially endorse that unless their country of residence passes a death penalty on spammers or something. But as in my original post, I certainly dream of seeing spammers with holes in their heads and lots of gibs flying through the air.
> Spammers website should be hacked and cracked and trashed.
So long as it doesn't involve an attack against the network in general, I can't find an ethical problem with that.
> The companys that knowingly host them should get the same.
So long as it were organized, sorta like the old Usenet Death Penalty, no problem. Just so long as there is protection of the innocent and not a general smash and burn of any provider who gets a spammer loose on their system.
You missed my point. A DDoS is an attack against the network, not just a spammer's site. If one of my users gets caught running that screensaver they can kiss their network access bye bye. A DDoS is a DDoS, period. They are abusing MY network, the LA-Net network, their upstream provider, etc. There are no good abuses and bad abuses, just abuses to be shut down.
> Why is "Regular Porn" on the other side of "Nazi" in your continuum? > Are you a Liberal Alabaman?
No, I am a librarian subject to the Child Internet Protection Act that requires me to control access to porn for both adults and children. But stormfront is still good to go, 1st Amendment and all that. Go figure.
Yes, spammers are evil scum who need a standard NATO round square in the forehead. But this sort of rough and ready justice worries me. An attack on the network is an attack on the network, period. If this sort of thing becomes respectable where does it end?
If it is OK to DDoS spamers, who else is it ok to knock off of the net?
Kiddie Porn?
Regular Porn?
Nazi/Skinhead sites?
Anything YOU think is a 'hate site'?
Anything ANYONE things is a 'hate site'?
Anything anyone objects to for any reason?
Business competitors?
Political opponents?
Anyone applauding Lycos for this had better be ready to draw the line somewhere on that list above and defend why their line is the absolute correct one in language all can agree on or that line will creep down at Internet speed.
>> 2) Solaris is not known to be portable beyond Sparc, Sparc64 and >> ia32. ia64 and AMD64/x86-64 might happen but as far as I know don't >> yet exist. > Is known by whom? Solaris has run on x86 hardware for more than ten years.
Yes. ia32 is Intel's preferred nomenclature for the 32bit Intel platform.
> You are confusing two issues here. For right to use Solaris, Sun has > announced $0.
Meaningless. Previous versions of Solaris have been $0 as well. For that matter, MSIE is 'free' in that sense also.
> The License for open sourcing it has not yet been anounced, BUT Sun > has committed to an OSI compliant license. I think that might just > qualify as open source.
Yes, but the fact they are still working on the license speaks volumes. If they weren't busy behind the scenes trying to game the system they would have already just picked one. I'd guess they are in fast and furious negotiations with OSI trying to see just how closed a license they can get them to put their blessing on.
But yes, if Sun actually releases a complete buildable sourcetree under a license blessed by OSI it would qualify as Open Source. And it might actually happen, it would be a good thing if it does.
>> 4) Sun is almost certain to keep parts totally closed due to >> licensing terms with third party suppliers. > That would not be Sun keeping it closed, that would be the license > owner. Let's put the blame where it would belong.
Who is blaming anyone? It just IS. Proprietary software vendors cross license each others 'IP' on a regular basis. I wouldn't at all be suprised to learn that most of the device drivers in Solaris will be withheld for example. The reality though is that if a source tree is released that is useless on most common hardware there will be little interest in it.
>> 5) Sun will rig things to retain ALL creative control >Assumption on your part. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I > have an idea how things are going, but unfortunately I can't talk > about it yet.
And that is the problem. Obviously you are inside the loop but 'can't talk about it' with the outside community. Bad way to start building outside relationships.
Basically it boils down to us in the OS/FS world not really knowing what Sun's intentions are, leading to a lack of goodwill and trust. Until you get the corporate culture singing out of the same hymnal we just don't know what to think of you guys. Over the years Sun has been all over the map, from releasing important software and specs for free to damn near being Steve Balmer's bitch.
Take the example of the guys you like to bash these days, Red Hat. They can get away with something like RHEL with only minimal bitching from the younger hotheads on/. because they don't just talk to us, by both word and deed they make it clear they ARE 'us'.
> Others have already commented on hardware support, so I'll talk about speed.
Hey, they might pull off a faster machine on some of the benchmarks. Competition is good, but faster overall on their first serious attempt to become competitive on Intel hardware? I'll believe that when I see it. They are going up against the best of the best and the Linux guys have about a decade's head start. Hell, look how long it took Linux to catch up to parity with BSD's network stack. Performance doesn't just happen overnight and Sun doesn't exactly have the engineering manpower it once did, the Grim Downsizer has had a fulltime camp at Sun for years now.
And then we get to hardware support. They have two choices there, deal with the hardware vendors under NDA which nixes OS support or fight the same reverse engineering battles the Linux & BSD camps have waged since the dawn of time. Solaris86 has always been weak in driver support and I'd doubt things have changed all that much in just a year or two. But hey, I'd love to see Solaris 10 ship with a buttload of new hardware with shiny drivers that support all features with full open drivers. But that isn't the way to bet.
Couple of false assumptions in the guys story. Typical when suits try to make tech decisions, especially when they are fool enough to believe their LACK of knowledge makes them more qualified, as this guy does.
A few of the obvious clues missed are:
1) Linux is already ahead of Solaris on Intel hardware, not behind as this guy believes from reading Sun press releases.
2) Solaris is not known to be portable beyond Sparc, Sparc64 and ia32. ia64 and AMD64/x86-64 might happen but as far as I know don't yet exist.
3) Sun has yet to announce a license for Solaris, it is very doubtful it will be actual Open Source and almost certainly not Free Software in the FSF sense of the term.
4) Sun is almost certain to keep parts totally closed due to licensing terms with third party suppliers.
5) Sun will rig things to retain ALL creative control from the Java experience. This will preclude any sort of community involvement on the scale needed to compete with Linux.
Yea, they can't even get the plain written facts of the story right, I'd be terrified what Disney is going to mangle the story into if I planned to watch it. Me, I have the DVD set from the BBC. Even if they did get the story right I'm just not sure the story will benefit from a major cgi driven Hollywood remake.
> > I'd bet more of us Red staters have read Jane Smiley's tirade on >Never heard of her. Should I have done?
Considering the damage she is inflicting on your cause, compounded by the fact nary a word of reproach has yet to issue from your side to what by any definition of the word would be 'hate speech', I'd say yes you probably should go look it up.
> Oh, pot calling the kettle black, I love it.
Yea, but I'm just a guy on/. stirring the pot. And we do have a bit of a right to be pissed, between the piece I referrenced and the headlines on most of the world's newspapers calling people like myself 'idiots' and worse for daring to disagree with your side.
I mean, sure we have bombthrowers and fringe elements on our side, life is more fun with em on both sides for us political junkies. Hell, as above, I like lobbing a few myself. Difference is Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Pat Robertson aren't considered major policymaking forces in our party unlike Howard Dean (who could have actually WON your party's nomination!), Micheal Moore and James Carville.
> And most liberals, of course, do not consider redneck conservative > christian bigots to make up the bulk of Americans. But you wouldn't > understand that, as you surround yourself with so many of them you > can't see anyone else.
If you would carry your butt out of your blue state cocoon you would discover a few facts:
1. Out here in the Red States, most of us aren't mouth breathing morons.
2. Most are Christians, a reality you on the pagan left are just going to have to deal with. (Although I am not, being an Agnostic.)
3. We are conservative. The only reason Democrats won elections in the past was the phenomenon of the Southern "Yellow Dog" Democrats who are dying off and/or finally realizing that the Democratic party has totally changed and they now vote Republican.
4. Voting Republican is NOT a codeword for a return to the Jim Crow era. (Who by the way, like most Southern Politicians of the era, were lifelong Democrats.) The sooner you guys figure that out the sooner you can return to being a viable opposition party again.
> You're hardly bright now are you? You just re-elected the worst > President in living memory.
Yea, right. I am old enough to have heard all this crap before. You intellectual lightweights were spouting this same line twenty years ago about a certain "senile old actor who thinks he is some sort of cowboy". Earlier this year Democrats could line up fast enough to say nice things about the Gipper they used to hate. Nothing succeeds like success, if Bush can push through on Iraq and win you guys will be pretending you never opposed him at every step either.
For some reason, in your perverted fantasy world, every Republican is an idiot. Nixon was an evil idiot, Reagan was a senile old idiot, Bush the elder did get somewhat of a pass on the idiot charge but it is back with a vengence for Shrub. Graduating both Harvard AND Yale isn't enough for a Republican to escape being called an idiot, so why don't you explain what it takes for a Republican to be deemed of 'average intelligence' in you worldview? Yes, Bush 43 has his dreaded speech impediment but after listening to him I always know exactly what he was trying to say, couldn't for the life of me figure out what Kerry was really saying half the time even though his use of English was perfect.... perfect but so nuanced you could read into it whatever you wanted to.
> Right now there's no point in swaying anyone's opinion,
Uh huh. I'd bet more of us Red staters have read Jane Smiley's tirade on Slate than you guys considering how many links I have seen to it in the last week. If you don't think every fscking one of us redoubled our resolve to make sure none of you freaks, misfits and wierdos EVER get near the levers of power again, you are going to be sadly mistaken come the midterms.
And it isn't just that one twit, there have been dozens of similar rants against the "stupid rednecks in Jesusland" in all of the nations most read publications by leaders in the Democratic Party who SHOULD know better than to hurl childish insults at over half of the country they expect to lead someday. If our side is bright enough to be clipping this stuff and bold enough to throw it right back in your faces in two years we could see the end of you, and that would be a beautiful day.
> The original article wasn't about science at all; it was about the > media's "balanced" misreporting of scientific news.
True, but if the Science community is really as biased as I'm claiming, any journalist who takes their claims at face value is either incompetent or in on the attempt to influnce public opinion with slanted politicized pseudoscience masquerading under the name of Science.
Generally, a properly functioning Press would be very similar to a properly functioning scientific establishment in that both would be engaged in a relentless persuit of the facts, regardless of where they might lead. Both would approach their work with a slightly skeptical midset, ready to question the establishment. Of course this world doesn't really exist.
> The theory of global warming is one century old, it has been predicted, > and it is measured
No reliable tempretaure measurements exist from measuring stations which are not now deep inside the heat domes of major population centers so I'd like to know how it has been 'measured' reliably enough to state with a high degree of confidence that global tempratures are up 1 degree.
Then, even if you can properly document a temprature change you have to be able to prove the cause. We do know with a high degree of confidence that both the global average temprature and localized regions have shown large variablility over recorded history, long before the industrial age where man's influence would have been large enough to account for the changes. Greenland's name isn't just some sick joke, there was a time when it WAS green.
For example, the 'ol folks around here (Beauregard Parish Louisiana, USA) recall that we used to get snow around here on a fairly regular basis. There are even a few old B&W photos that pop up showing snow on local landmarks. Hasn't really snowed here in my lifetime though. Is that Global Warming at work or a localized climate change? Which was the aberation from the longterm average? Considering there were no people here two hundred years ago and only a couple of farmers, etc one hundred years back it would be hard to collect enough data to say.
There is pretty good historical correlation between solar activity and global climate, and considering Mr. Sun has been very cranky of late, perhaps you need look no farther for your cause than the sky above.
Face it, the case for global climate change is still largely unproven but a lot of so called scientists believe in it with a fervor not normally seen outside a Pentecostal church or a Howard Dean rally.
> The people who speak out about a bias in the media and sciences do so by >reacting to the percieved bias, thus making themselves guilty of the > thing they complain about, whether their compaints were valid or not.
Not at all. I claim bias in the media because they state as settled fact things very much in dispute, like Global Warming, they report the claims of left leaning groups as fact and the claims of the right as "claims from the right wing thinktank.....". And so on and so on.
> And, you know, big corporations that do a lot of funding and
And I don't trust their paid for research anymore than I buy into the NSF's when it is on a political subject. Both are pushing a political agenda and trying to gain respectability by tarting it up as Science.
> Doesn't it seem at all strange that so many universities, places of > Higher Freaking Learning, have so many people there who subscribe to > a worldview opposed to your own? Doesn't this at least cause you to > examine your own beliefs?
Not a bit. What do clostered ivory tower intellectuals know about the real world? Probably less than cloistered priests from bygone days knew about it. Why should I take the political opinions of some halfwit humanities "Professor" pushing failed socialist ideas in what is billed as a English class more seriously than I would from some other schmuck? Or for that matter why should I take the political views of a Nobel Prize winning physicist more seriously than I would Bill Buckley or James Carville. Specialization in one field confers little or no authority in another, in fact the reverse is more often true. When university types stop taking intellectual frauds like Noam Choamsky seriously I might listen to what they have to say, but I'll probably never give much extra weight to the fact they have tenure. I'm bright enough to reject arguments that depend on an appeal to authority.
Fact of the matter is most university types were educated far beyond their intelligence, and only the ones who couldn't succeed in the real world tend to make careers in academia.
> Except that "Democrat" and "Republican" are themselves arbitrary terms >that have come to mean what they mean today, and not too long ago meant > quite different things, while "scientist" is a term that predates our > pitiful nation by centuries. Why not ask Galileo who he voted for?
And I hold that "Scientist" is equally arbitrary, especially as it is done today. That there are accepted dogmas one must believe if one is to be successful in the field of science. And no, the idealized notion of the Scientist doesn't predate our Republic by much, and the critter probably hasn't ever existed as such. Newton was reputedly a prick who stole ideas from his students and such, Einstein couldn't accept Quantum Mechanics on religious principle, etc. In the end, scientists are not homo superior, they are people just like thee and me, filled with preconceived notions and biases. The great ones are the ones who manage to overcome all that just a little, and by standing on the shoulders of the great ones who came before them see just a little bit farther. Then they usually get abused and neglected by all of the other "respectable" scientists until they are dead.
> I claimed that SCIENCE as an establishment is self-correcting and, in > the long-term, unbiased.
Given a long enough time horizon I'd agree. But so has the general human condition been on a generally upward trend, and I'd assert that Science hasn't proven to have a much better track record of improvement than say, Philosophy or Politics.
Sorry, call me a cynic if you must but I agree with the guy (can't remember which famous physicist right now) who said, "Scientists don't change their minds, they just die."
> Bill Maher once said: "Let us not become so tolerant that we tolerate > intolerance"
Which only proves that Maher is an idiot. If you want to really be tolerant you MUST tolerate intolerance. Otherwise you are only tolerating those who agree with you, and that just makes you a standard issue Democrat.
The Right to Be Wrong is one of the most fundemental Rights and should be defended by all who believe in a Free Society. It is one thing to think someone is wrong. But the second you cross the line and say it is wrong to allow them to hold a position you are convinced is wrong you become a menace to liberty. Take a racist for example. Denouncing him/her as wrong for refusing to serve a customer on racial grounds is perfectly acceptable peer pressure, passing laws to put him in jail is WRONG. Just as wrong as when anti-sodomy laws put people in jail for what consenting adults did. The Right to free association is meaningless without the impled Right to NOT associate. Even when thee and me think someone is wrong, they have the Right to be Wrong and we must defend it lest we set the precedent that being Politically Incorrect is a criminal offence.
> Well, you have to make sure the grant providers get their money's worth.
Exactly. And the bigger problem is science is highly politicized. So it would be great if journalists put some effort into debunking bad science, but then most journalists are just as biased and in the same way. The only time they present opposing views is to either ridicule them or create some sense of conflict to sex up their story. Neither scientists or journalists are very interested in searching for the Truth if it collides with their politics.
Lets look at the Science game for a moment. Just who are those grant providers you speak of? Major universities and government agencies like the NSF, staffed with academics from the university world. If you haven't figured out yet that universities are 0wn3d by the left/socialists/progressives/whatever they call themselves this week you probably are one of the ones who think the Red states are filled with idiots and want to leave for Canada.
So there are no 'respectable' scientists who hold opposing views on politicized scientific issues because by definition you can't BE a 'respectable' scientist since the people who decide who gets to be a scientist won't allow those with opposing views to stay in the club. Kinda like why you don't find many pro life Democrats, or gun controlling Republicans, just doesn't fit the definition of what those organizations ARE.
And science is just as political, anyone who believes scientists are noble selfless creatures motivated by a quest for the Truth has been reading too many 1930's pulp Sci-Fi mags. Most brand name scientists of teh past century were all too eager to sign onto socialist utopian and fascist schemes because they promised a world governed by reason and science, i.e. themselves. Too full of pride and ego to realize what should have been obvious, that an ability to do research into physics or mathemetics has an almost zero correlation with an ability to lead or govern.
Only those blinded by their biases can't see the problem with the positive feedback loop that exists in the science funding world. If your stated purpose isn't to advance a popular notion you don't get funded. Then when the unpopular views have no science to back them this is used to call the matter settled and deny any future funding.
The article was hellbent on using the Global Warming Theory as an example, so lets us use that as the example here. If you propose a study taking Global Warming as a given, and plan to document it's effects you will almost certainly be funded. Propose a study intended to determine whether it is actually happening or to explore an alternate cause and you will not be funded. Nobody will even bother to READ your reasoning, the decision will be purely political. Besides the political implications of Global Warming Theory being proven wrong, too many careers would be ruined, careers long enough that they sit on the boards handing out the gtants. And further, any future research proposals will get extra scrutiny because you are a known heretic. Eventually scientists with opposing viewpoints get tired of eating beanie weenies because their research proposals keep getting shot down and either leave science or become corporate researchers. Then the lack of opposing research is held up as 'proof' that there ARE no opposing viewpoints.
Personally, I am an agnostic on the Global Warming question because I know that the science is so screwed up I can't believe ANY of it. The 'mainstream' science is so political it should be ignored and the only well funded research on the other side is funded by industries with their own ax to grind because they are the only funding source open to to scientists who have doubts.
> You would think that Fox News's credibility would have been blown to > pieces after this came out.
And you would think you would have enough brains to RTFA you thought so important to link to. Fox News has about as much control over the FOX network as CNBC does over what goes on over at NBC's affiliates; i.e. none. That piece you linked to, which I wouldn't put much credibility in anyway, reeking as it does of biases, is talking about a FOX-TV affiliate. Do you understand how the whole network/affiliate deal works in American TV?
> What's worse is he assumed that hypothetical agreement wasn't in writing > and proceeded to draw further conclusions from that assumption
No, read up the thread, in the very first post I excluded the case of corporate site licensing and other such real signed contract sort of software licensing it should be clear I am discussing consumer EULAs.
I assert that since EULAs are wrong on both moral and legal grounds, either of which alone is cause for ignoring them. I claim that I have as much right to read my software as my processor does.
> But then you say the GPL provides a license, yet nobody has to sign > anything to use GPL'd software, or copy it, or distribute it, as long > as they meet its conditions. So if I don't have to sign anything, then > the GPL isn't binding.
Exactly correct. If you copy a GNU program and distribute it you do not have to accept the GPL. However when RMS and his squadron of elite attack lawyer ninjas descend upon you for violating their copyright, smiting thee with their rightous fury, only saying "I accept the GPL and have followed all of it's conditions" will make them stop, because otherwise that have you dead to rights on copyright infringement. See the difference? The GPL is a LICENSE to perform an action otherwise forbidden by law. You don't have to sign it, but if you want to take advantage of the additional freedoms it grants you must accept it in whole, both the THOU SHALL and the THOU SHALL NOT parts, because nothing else gives you the right to distribute a copy of a GPL licensed work.
All the GPL is, in essence the following statement. "This program is copyrighted. This means that by law you may not copy it. However, because we are good hoopy froods and want software to be Free, we grant you the right to copy and redistribute it under the following conditions. By distributing copies it is presumed that you accepted the limitations of this license since nothing else gives you permission to distribute copies so any copies made under terms and conditions not covered by this license are by definition not permitted by this license. QED."
Now take the typical EULA, it removes rights the end user already has, offers nothing of value in exchange and expects to be taken sight unseen in most cases. Where is the implied consent as in the GPL? By ignoring it I still have the right to run the program because I purchased it, I can reverse engineer it because I I bought the copy and have as much of a right to read it as my computer does.
> Software vendors aren't selling you their products...they're selling > you a LICENSE to use their products.
Nope. on the rare occasion I buy software, I BUY it. You do not need a license to use software anymore than you need one to read a book, or even to check one out of a public library.
> Then the GPL, the MPL, and every other open source license, is invalid. > That makes WhiteBox Linux illegal.
Again, you are quite mistaken. You may download as many copies of WhiteBox from whereever you please with nary a license to worry about from me, Red Hat, Inc, RMS, Linus, etc. However most of the components are copyrighted works and you have no legal right to reproduce them without permission from their authors. That is what the GPL provides, a LICENSE to copy; i.e. to do something you wouldn't legally be able to do. Go read the GPL again, it is a real work of art.
> Let's see...looking at the box for Intuit's TurboTax (its just what I > have handy):
It is typical, but meaningless. They can print whatever they want to on the side of the box, the manual, a clickwrap, whatever. It isn't actually a legally binding agreement. Only a contract binds and there are rules that must be followed to have a binding contract. You must have an informed buyer and seller, you must have disclosure, a signature and most important an exchange of value between both parties. A EULA meets none of those tests.
> The grandparent post was merely saying that violating an agreement is > immoral.
True enough but this whole matter revolves around whether an agreement exists. When people disagree on such matters, that is where the Law comes into the discussion and it is very clear on the point.
The original poster holds that as the creator and owner of a work he has absolute power to dictate the terms and conditions it can be USED under, and that by purchasing his work I MUST agree to those terms. I hold that he doesn't own the work, only the limited power of the Copyright and that unless he can convince me to sign a contract stating otherwise, by purchasing a copy of his work I am free to read it, there being no agreement between us to the contrary.
> All well and good, but when you "buy" Windows XP in a store, you aren't > buying Windows XP, you're buying a LICENSE to use Windows XP in binary > form. Huge difference.
Still hung up on that misconception. No, a license is only in effect if I sign a contract changing the sale into a limited license. They can print "By buying this hammer you agree you will ONLY drive our brand of nails and strike no other object with this tool." on the side, stock the shelves of Home Depot with them and get exactly nowhere when they attempt to enforce their EULA. Because a sale is a sale unless there are signed contracts and consideration given and received.
> Compiling source code and selling it isn't a way to keep you from using > it as you wish, it is a way to protect one's intellectual property.
"Intellectual Property" doesn't exist. I think this is where you are going off the reality track. What does exist are four related monopolies governments grant, in our case (USA for me, you might not be though) it is expressly "to promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts." Your code is NOT your property, only the Copyright, which is a grant of a monopoly in exchange for you creating and publishing (i.e. disclosing for all to see) the work. Keeping it secret does nothing to promote the progress of Science or the Usefull Arts.
We also have Patents which can protect your algorithm if it passes muster at the Patent Office but a Patent explicitly requires full disclosure of the patented invention, again to promote the progress of Science by allowing others to learn from your creation. The third option is the Trade Secret, which gets almost no government protection outside enforcing the contracts you enter into with those you disclose the secret to. The final item covered under the poorly named class called "Intellectual Property" is Trademarks, but that doesn't partain here.
> I am not required to give you every detail of a product when I sell > or license it to you.
No you aren't, but if you are foolish enough to SELL me a copy of your product I am free to discover it's workings. It is called reverse engineering and it is a perfectly valid and ethical practice.
> If I was, you'd get the driver code when you bought an ATi card
Not at all, nothing requires ATI supply source unless the driver incorporated GPL code or something. However nothing stops the purchasers of ATI cards from reverse engineering them and writing their own, which happens to be the case for several of their cards, moreso for certain less open vendors.
> if you decompile a company's code, determine one of their algorithms, > and then broadcast it (you said "discuss") to the world
Again, you mistake a grant of a limited monopoly with property. If I do not reproduce their copyrighted code I violate no law unless I signed a confidentiality agreement swearing to preserve their Trade Secrets. If the algorithm is patented it was already fully disclosed, otherwise their patent would be subject to being invalidated. You can't own an idea. In the interest of providing incentives to create new art and science we collectively, through our governments, grant limited monopolies.
> First you imply that the actual laws are irrelevant to your views on > morality:
When a society is correctly operating, laws codify morals. In our current dystopia of the Law divorced from Truth and Justice that isn't always the case. It is the Right, nay it is the Duty, of every citizen in a free society to violate an unjust law as an act of civil disobiedience.
And yes, I have done so publicly, specifically by confessing to violating the DMCA by viewing DVDs on my laptop in a letter to President Bush in support of releasing Dmitry Sklyarov, in the vein of "Lets leave the Russians out of this, if you guys need a DMCA test case, try me."
> If you don't like the conditions of the offer, don't buy the product.
That is exactly what the Uniform Commercial Code is about, ensuring everyone knows and can agree in a meaningful way to the terms of the transaction. Without a signed contract specifying different terms though, the UCC says that a sale of goods transfers a clear title to those goods, meaning there can't be any conditions attached.
There is no way I or any other sane person would engage in trade if the terms of the transaction were unknown until after the deal was inrevokable, which is exactly the case the commercial software industry deludes itself into thinking is happening each time a shrinkwraped product is sold with a EULA inside or even worse, in the installer.
If you want your world, spend the money to make it happen. Pay Walmart enough for them to train their clerks to execute a proper contract (with legally required presales disclosures, etc.) each and every time a customer tries to buy your product, execute the proper legal paperwork so that Walmart and their minion has the legal power to engage in a contract in yoru name, etc. Otherwise deal with reality.
> So if you buy a copy of MS Office and figure out how to break the > copy protection, you think it's OK to sell copies of the cracked > version?
Of course not, it is a copyrighted work and outside a few defined exceptions, reproduction is a legal monopoly granted to the author. However I would consider myself free to DISCUSS the method of protection in use, up to and including disclosing how to defeat it.
Slashdot Mirror
> Oh, you're just a network admin.
Damn straight, and I rule with a BOFH's iron fist. Anyone abusing the portion of the network under my control will know my wrath. That is the role of the network admin, I care about the network, very little about the actual traffic passing over it. I track and report my share of spammers and other network abusers to their network admins, who in a perfect world would be just as anal in policing their portions of the network. When we are doing our job right the network flows, the users are happy and we read slashdot.
It is when asshats and other assorted defectives get control over substantial portions of the network things get messy. Unfortunatly us BOFH types no longer control the backbone so can no longer cut off sites that refuse to enforce descpline on their users.
> It is about time we (the collective geeks) do something real about spam.
The only people who can 'do' something about spam are the ones who run the backbone. When they decide doing the "wink wink nudge nudge" game of loudly proclaiming their hatred of spam and signing pink contracts with the spammers isn't profitable anymore spam will end. If all of the major providers started enforcing their published AUP/TOS against their downstream customers spam would vanish in short order. Yes a few examples would have to be made, China and Korea would probably be booted off the network for a week or two, but it would end. Windows zombies would start getting detected and shutdown in hours instead of the current weeks to never. In short, spam is condoned at the highest levels of the network and will continue until that changes.
> Spammers should be shot.
Ok, I can't officially endorse that unless their country of residence passes a death penalty on spammers or something. But as in my original post, I certainly dream of seeing spammers with holes in their heads and lots of gibs flying through the air.
> Spammers website should be hacked and cracked and trashed.
So long as it doesn't involve an attack against the network in general, I can't find an ethical problem with that.
> The companys that knowingly host them should get the same.
So long as it were organized, sorta like the old Usenet Death Penalty, no problem. Just so long as there is protection of the innocent and not a general smash and burn of any provider who gets a spammer loose on their system.
> Forgive those that trespass? F*ck that.
You missed my point. A DDoS is an attack against the network, not just a spammer's site. If one of my users gets caught running that screensaver they can kiss their network access bye bye. A DDoS is a DDoS, period. They are abusing MY network, the LA-Net network, their upstream provider, etc. There are no good abuses and bad abuses, just abuses to be shut down.
> Why is "Regular Porn" on the other side of "Nazi" in your continuum?
> Are you a Liberal Alabaman?
No, I am a librarian subject to the Child Internet Protection Act that requires me to control access to porn for both adults and children. But stormfront is still good to go, 1st Amendment and all that. Go figure.
Yes, spammers are evil scum who need a standard NATO round square in the forehead. But this sort of rough and ready justice worries me. An attack on the network is an attack on the network, period. If this sort of thing becomes respectable where does it end?
If it is OK to DDoS spamers, who else is it ok to knock off of the net?
Kiddie Porn?
Regular Porn?
Nazi/Skinhead sites?
Anything YOU think is a 'hate site'?
Anything ANYONE things is a 'hate site'?
Anything anyone objects to for any reason?
Business competitors?
Political opponents?
Anyone applauding Lycos for this had better be ready to draw the line somewhere on that list above and defend why their line is the absolute correct one in language all can agree on or that line will creep down at Internet speed.
>> 2) Solaris is not known to be portable beyond Sparc, Sparc64 and
/. because they don't just talk to us, by both word and deed they make it clear they ARE 'us'.
>> ia32. ia64 and AMD64/x86-64 might happen but as far as I know don't
>> yet exist.
> Is known by whom? Solaris has run on x86 hardware for more than ten years.
Yes. ia32 is Intel's preferred nomenclature for the 32bit Intel platform.
> You are confusing two issues here. For right to use Solaris, Sun has
> announced $0.
Meaningless. Previous versions of Solaris have been $0 as well. For that matter, MSIE is 'free' in that sense also.
> The License for open sourcing it has not yet been anounced, BUT Sun
> has committed to an OSI compliant license. I think that might just
> qualify as open source.
Yes, but the fact they are still working on the license speaks volumes. If they weren't busy behind the scenes trying to game the system they would have already just picked one. I'd guess they are in fast and furious negotiations with OSI trying to see just how closed a license they can get them to put their blessing on.
But yes, if Sun actually releases a complete buildable sourcetree under a license blessed by OSI it would qualify as Open Source. And it might actually happen, it would be a good thing if it does.
>> 4) Sun is almost certain to keep parts totally closed due to
>> licensing terms with third party suppliers.
> That would not be Sun keeping it closed, that would be the license
> owner. Let's put the blame where it would belong.
Who is blaming anyone? It just IS. Proprietary software vendors cross license each others 'IP' on a regular basis. I wouldn't at all be suprised to learn that most of the device drivers in Solaris will be withheld for example. The reality though is that if a source tree is released that is useless on most common hardware there will be little interest in it.
>> 5) Sun will rig things to retain ALL creative control
>Assumption on your part. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I
> have an idea how things are going, but unfortunately I can't talk
> about it yet.
And that is the problem. Obviously you are inside the loop but 'can't talk about it' with the outside community. Bad way to start building outside relationships.
Basically it boils down to us in the OS/FS world not really knowing what Sun's intentions are, leading to a lack of goodwill and trust. Until you get the corporate culture singing out of the same hymnal we just don't know what to think of you guys. Over the years Sun has been all over the map, from releasing important software and specs for free to damn near being Steve Balmer's bitch.
Take the example of the guys you like to bash these days, Red Hat. They can get away with something like RHEL with only minimal bitching from the younger hotheads on
> Others have already commented on hardware support, so I'll talk about speed.
Hey, they might pull off a faster machine on some of the benchmarks. Competition is good, but faster overall on their first serious attempt to become competitive on Intel hardware? I'll believe that when I see it. They are going up against the best of the best and the Linux guys have about a decade's head start. Hell, look how long it took Linux to catch up to parity with BSD's network stack. Performance doesn't just happen overnight and Sun doesn't exactly have the engineering manpower it once did, the Grim Downsizer has had a fulltime camp at Sun for years now.
And then we get to hardware support. They have two choices there, deal with the hardware vendors under NDA which nixes OS support or fight the same reverse engineering battles the Linux & BSD camps have waged since the dawn of time. Solaris86 has always been weak in driver support and I'd doubt things have changed all that much in just a year or two. But hey, I'd love to see Solaris 10 ship with a buttload of new hardware with shiny drivers that support all features with full open drivers. But that isn't the way to bet.
Couple of false assumptions in the guys story. Typical when suits try to make tech decisions, especially when they are fool enough to believe their LACK of knowledge makes them more qualified, as this guy does.
A few of the obvious clues missed are:
1) Linux is already ahead of Solaris on Intel hardware, not behind as this guy believes from reading Sun press releases.
2) Solaris is not known to be portable beyond Sparc, Sparc64 and ia32. ia64 and AMD64/x86-64 might happen but as far as I know don't yet exist.
3) Sun has yet to announce a license for Solaris, it is very doubtful it will be actual Open Source and almost certainly not Free Software in the FSF sense of the term.
4) Sun is almost certain to keep parts totally closed due to licensing terms with third party suppliers.
5) Sun will rig things to retain ALL creative control from the Java experience. This will preclude any sort of community involvement on the scale needed to compete with Linux.
Yea, they can't even get the plain written facts of the story right, I'd be terrified what Disney is going to mangle the story into if I planned to watch it. Me, I have the DVD set from the BBC. Even if they did get the story right I'm just not sure the story will benefit from a major cgi driven Hollywood remake.
> > I'd bet more of us Red staters have read Jane Smiley's tirade on
/. stirring the pot. And we do have a bit of a right to be pissed, between the piece I referrenced and the headlines on most of the world's newspapers calling people like myself 'idiots' and worse for daring to disagree with your side.
>Never heard of her. Should I have done?
Considering the damage she is inflicting on your cause, compounded by the fact nary a word of reproach has yet to issue from your side to what by any definition of the word would be 'hate speech', I'd say yes you probably should go look it up.
> Oh, pot calling the kettle black, I love it.
Yea, but I'm just a guy on
I mean, sure we have bombthrowers and fringe elements on our side, life is more fun with em on both sides for us political junkies. Hell, as above, I like lobbing a few myself. Difference is Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Pat Robertson aren't considered major policymaking forces in our party unlike Howard Dean (who could have actually WON your party's nomination!), Micheal Moore and James Carville.
> And most liberals, of course, do not consider redneck conservative
> christian bigots to make up the bulk of Americans. But you wouldn't
> understand that, as you surround yourself with so many of them you
> can't see anyone else.
If you would carry your butt out of your blue state cocoon you would discover a few facts:
1. Out here in the Red States, most of us aren't mouth breathing morons.
2. Most are Christians, a reality you on the pagan left are just going to have to deal with. (Although I am not, being an Agnostic.)
3. We are conservative. The only reason Democrats won elections in the past was the phenomenon of the Southern "Yellow Dog" Democrats who are dying off and/or finally realizing that the Democratic party has totally changed and they now vote Republican.
4. Voting Republican is NOT a codeword for a return to the Jim Crow era. (Who by the way, like most Southern Politicians of the era, were lifelong Democrats.) The sooner you guys figure that out the sooner you can return to being a viable opposition party again.
> You're hardly bright now are you? You just re-elected the worst
> President in living memory.
Yea, right. I am old enough to have heard all this crap before. You intellectual lightweights were spouting this same line twenty years ago about a certain "senile old actor who thinks he is some sort of cowboy". Earlier this year Democrats could line up fast enough to say nice things about the Gipper they used to hate. Nothing succeeds like success, if Bush can push through on Iraq and win you guys will be pretending you never opposed him at every step either.
For some reason, in your perverted fantasy world, every Republican is an idiot. Nixon was an evil idiot, Reagan was a senile old idiot, Bush the elder did get somewhat of a pass on the idiot charge but it is back with a vengence for Shrub. Graduating both Harvard AND Yale isn't enough for a Republican to escape being called an idiot, so why don't you explain what it takes for a Republican to be deemed of 'average intelligence' in you worldview? Yes, Bush 43 has his dreaded speech impediment but after listening to him I always know exactly what he was trying to say, couldn't for the life of me figure out what Kerry was really saying half the time even though his use of English was perfect.... perfect but so nuanced you could read into it whatever you wanted to.
> Right now there's no point in swaying anyone's opinion,
Uh huh. I'd bet more of us Red staters have read Jane Smiley's tirade on Slate than you guys considering how many links I have seen to it in the last week. If you don't think every fscking one of us redoubled our resolve to make sure none of you freaks, misfits and wierdos EVER get near the levers of power again, you are going to be sadly mistaken come the midterms.
And it isn't just that one twit, there have been dozens of similar rants against the "stupid rednecks in Jesusland" in all of the nations most read publications by leaders in the Democratic Party who SHOULD know better than to hurl childish insults at over half of the country they expect to lead someday. If our side is bright enough to be clipping this stuff and bold enough to throw it right back in your faces in two years we could see the end of you, and that would be a beautiful day.
> The original article wasn't about science at all; it was about the
> media's "balanced" misreporting of scientific news.
True, but if the Science community is really as biased as I'm claiming, any journalist who takes their claims at face value is either incompetent or in on the attempt to influnce public opinion with slanted politicized pseudoscience masquerading under the name of Science.
Generally, a properly functioning Press would be very similar to a properly functioning scientific establishment in that both would be engaged in a relentless persuit of the facts, regardless of where they might lead. Both would approach their work with a slightly skeptical midset, ready to question the establishment. Of course this world doesn't really exist.
> The theory of global warming is one century old, it has been predicted,
> and it is measured
No reliable tempretaure measurements exist from measuring stations which are not now deep inside the heat domes of major population centers so I'd like to know how it has been 'measured' reliably enough to state with a high degree of confidence that global tempratures are up 1 degree.
Then, even if you can properly document a temprature change you have to be able to prove the cause. We do know with a high degree of confidence that both the global average temprature and localized regions have shown large variablility over recorded history, long before the industrial age where man's influence would have been large enough to account for the changes. Greenland's name isn't just some sick joke, there was a time when it WAS green.
For example, the 'ol folks around here (Beauregard Parish Louisiana, USA) recall that we used to get snow around here on a fairly regular basis. There are even a few old B&W photos that pop up showing snow on local landmarks. Hasn't really snowed here in my lifetime though. Is that Global Warming at work or a localized climate change? Which was the aberation from the longterm average? Considering there were no people here two hundred years ago and only a couple of farmers, etc one hundred years back it would be hard to collect enough data to say.
There is pretty good historical correlation between solar activity and global climate, and considering Mr. Sun has been very cranky of late, perhaps you need look no farther for your cause than the sky above.
Face it, the case for global climate change is still largely unproven but a lot of so called scientists believe in it with a fervor not normally seen outside a Pentecostal church or a Howard Dean rally.
> The people who speak out about a bias in the media and sciences do so by
>reacting to the percieved bias, thus making themselves guilty of the
> thing they complain about, whether their compaints were valid or not.
Not at all. I claim bias in the media because they state as settled fact things very much in dispute, like Global Warming, they report the claims of left leaning groups as fact and the claims of the right as "claims from the right wing thinktank.....". And so on and so on.
> And, you know, big corporations that do a lot of funding and
And I don't trust their paid for research anymore than I buy into the NSF's when it is on a political subject. Both are pushing a political agenda and trying to gain respectability by tarting it up as Science.
> Doesn't it seem at all strange that so many universities, places of
> Higher Freaking Learning, have so many people there who subscribe to
> a worldview opposed to your own? Doesn't this at least cause you to
> examine your own beliefs?
Not a bit. What do clostered ivory tower intellectuals know about the real world? Probably less than cloistered priests from bygone days knew about it. Why should I take the political opinions of some halfwit humanities "Professor" pushing failed socialist ideas in what is billed as a English class more seriously than I would from some other schmuck? Or for that matter why should I take the political views of a Nobel Prize winning physicist more seriously than I would Bill Buckley or James Carville. Specialization in one field confers little or no authority in another, in fact the reverse is more often true. When university types stop taking intellectual frauds like Noam Choamsky seriously I might listen to what they have to say, but I'll probably never give much extra weight to the fact they have tenure. I'm bright enough to reject arguments that depend on an appeal to authority.
Fact of the matter is most university types were educated far beyond their intelligence, and only the ones who couldn't succeed in the real world tend to make careers in academia.
> Except that "Democrat" and "Republican" are themselves arbitrary terms
>that have come to mean what they mean today, and not too long ago meant
> quite different things, while "scientist" is a term that predates our
> pitiful nation by centuries. Why not ask Galileo who he voted for?
And I hold that "Scientist" is equally arbitrary, especially as it is done today. That there are accepted dogmas one must believe if one is to be successful in the field of science. And no, the idealized notion of the Scientist doesn't predate our Republic by much, and the critter probably hasn't ever existed as such. Newton was reputedly a prick who stole ideas from his students and such, Einstein couldn't accept Quantum Mechanics on religious principle, etc. In the end, scientists are not homo superior, they are people just like thee and me, filled with preconceived notions and biases. The great ones are the ones who manage to overcome all that just a little, and by standing on the shoulders of the great ones who came before them see just a little bit farther. Then they usually get abused and neglected by all of the other "respectable" scientists until they are dead.
> I claimed that SCIENCE as an establishment is self-correcting and, in
> the long-term, unbiased.
Given a long enough time horizon I'd agree. But so has the general human condition been on a generally upward trend, and I'd assert that Science hasn't proven to have a much better track record of improvement than say, Philosophy or Politics.
Sorry, call me a cynic if you must but I agree with the guy (can't remember which famous physicist right now) who said, "Scientists don't change their minds, they just die."
> Bill Maher once said: "Let us not become so tolerant that we tolerate
> intolerance"
Which only proves that Maher is an idiot. If you want to really be tolerant you MUST tolerate intolerance. Otherwise you are only tolerating those who agree with you, and that just makes you a standard issue Democrat.
The Right to Be Wrong is one of the most fundemental Rights and should be defended by all who believe in a Free Society. It is one thing to think someone is wrong. But the second you cross the line and say it is wrong to allow them to hold a position you are convinced is wrong you become a menace to liberty. Take a racist for example. Denouncing him/her as wrong for refusing to serve a customer on racial grounds is perfectly acceptable peer pressure, passing laws to put him in jail is WRONG. Just as wrong as when anti-sodomy laws put people in jail for what consenting adults did. The Right to free association is meaningless without the impled Right to NOT associate. Even when thee and me think someone is wrong, they have the Right to be Wrong and we must defend it lest we set the precedent that being Politically Incorrect is a criminal offence.
> Well, you have to make sure the grant providers get their money's worth.
Exactly. And the bigger problem is science is highly politicized. So it would be great if journalists put some effort into debunking bad science, but then most journalists are just as biased and in the same way. The only time they present opposing views is to either ridicule them or create some sense of conflict to sex up their story. Neither scientists or journalists are very interested in searching for the Truth if it collides with their politics.
Lets look at the Science game for a moment. Just who are those grant providers you speak of? Major universities and government agencies like the NSF, staffed with academics from the university world. If you haven't figured out yet that universities are 0wn3d by the left/socialists/progressives/whatever they call themselves this week you probably are one of the ones who think the Red states are filled with idiots and want to leave for Canada.
So there are no 'respectable' scientists who hold opposing views on politicized scientific issues because by definition you can't BE a 'respectable' scientist since the people who decide who gets to be a scientist won't allow those with opposing views to stay in the club. Kinda like why you don't find many pro life Democrats, or gun controlling Republicans, just doesn't fit the definition of what those organizations ARE.
And science is just as political, anyone who believes scientists are noble selfless creatures motivated by a quest for the Truth has been reading too many 1930's pulp Sci-Fi mags. Most brand name scientists of teh past century were all too eager to sign onto socialist utopian and fascist schemes because they promised a world governed by reason and science, i.e. themselves. Too full of pride and ego to realize what should have been obvious, that an ability to do research into physics or mathemetics has an almost zero correlation with an ability to lead or govern.
Only those blinded by their biases can't see the problem with the positive feedback loop that exists in the science funding world. If your stated purpose isn't to advance a popular notion you don't get funded. Then when the unpopular views have no science to back them this is used to call the matter settled and deny any future funding.
The article was hellbent on using the Global Warming Theory as an example, so lets us use that as the example here. If you propose a study taking Global Warming as a given, and plan to document it's effects you will almost certainly be funded. Propose a study intended to determine whether it is actually happening or to explore an alternate cause and you will not be funded. Nobody will even bother to READ your reasoning, the decision will be purely political. Besides the political implications of Global Warming Theory being proven wrong, too many careers would be ruined, careers long enough that they sit on the boards handing out the gtants. And further, any future research proposals will get extra scrutiny because you are a known heretic. Eventually scientists with opposing viewpoints get tired of eating beanie weenies because their research proposals keep getting shot down and either leave science or become corporate researchers. Then the lack of opposing research is held up as 'proof' that there ARE no opposing viewpoints.
Personally, I am an agnostic on the Global Warming question because I know that the science is so screwed up I can't believe ANY of it. The 'mainstream' science is so political it should be ignored and the only well funded research on the other side is funded by industries with their own ax to grind because they are the only funding source open to to scientists who have doubts.
> You would think that Fox News's credibility would have been blown to
> pieces after this came out.
And you would think you would have enough brains to RTFA you thought so important to link to. Fox News has about as much control over the FOX network as CNBC does over what goes on over at NBC's affiliates; i.e. none. That piece you linked to, which I wouldn't put much credibility in anyway, reeking as it does of biases, is talking about a FOX-TV affiliate. Do you understand how the whole network/affiliate deal works in American TV?
> What's worse is he assumed that hypothetical agreement wasn't in writing
> and proceeded to draw further conclusions from that assumption
No, read up the thread, in the very first post I excluded the case of corporate site licensing and other such real signed contract sort of software licensing it should be clear I am discussing consumer EULAs.
I assert that since EULAs are wrong on both moral and legal grounds, either of which alone is cause for ignoring them. I claim that I have as much right to read my software as my processor does.
> But then you say the GPL provides a license, yet nobody has to sign
> anything to use GPL'd software, or copy it, or distribute it, as long
> as they meet its conditions. So if I don't have to sign anything, then
> the GPL isn't binding.
Exactly correct. If you copy a GNU program and distribute it you do not have to accept the GPL. However when RMS and his squadron of elite attack lawyer ninjas descend upon you for violating their copyright, smiting thee with their rightous fury, only saying "I accept the GPL and have followed all of it's conditions" will make them stop, because otherwise that have you dead to rights on copyright infringement. See the difference? The GPL is a LICENSE to perform an action otherwise forbidden by law. You don't have to sign it, but if you want to take advantage of the additional freedoms it grants you must accept it in whole, both the THOU SHALL and the THOU SHALL NOT parts, because nothing else gives you the right to distribute a copy of a GPL licensed work.
All the GPL is, in essence the following statement. "This program is copyrighted. This means that by law you may not copy it. However, because we are good hoopy froods and want software to be Free, we grant you the right to copy and redistribute it under the following conditions. By distributing copies it is presumed that you accepted the limitations of this license since nothing else gives you permission to distribute copies so any copies made under terms and conditions not covered by this license are by definition not permitted by this license. QED."
Now take the typical EULA, it removes rights the end user already has, offers nothing of value in exchange and expects to be taken sight unseen in most cases. Where is the implied consent as in the GPL? By ignoring it I still have the right to run the program because I purchased it, I can reverse engineer it because I I bought the copy and have as much of a right to read it as my computer does.
> Software vendors aren't selling you their products...they're selling
> you a LICENSE to use their products.
Nope. on the rare occasion I buy software, I BUY it. You do not need a license to use software anymore than you need one to read a book, or even to check one out of a public library.
> Then the GPL, the MPL, and every other open source license, is invalid.
> That makes WhiteBox Linux illegal.
Again, you are quite mistaken. You may download as many copies of WhiteBox from whereever you please with nary a license to worry about from me, Red Hat, Inc, RMS, Linus, etc. However most of the components are copyrighted works and you have no legal right to reproduce them without permission from their authors. That is what the GPL provides, a LICENSE to copy; i.e. to do something you wouldn't legally be able to do. Go read the GPL again, it is a real work of art.
> Let's see...looking at the box for Intuit's TurboTax (its just what I
> have handy):
It is typical, but meaningless. They can print whatever they want to on the side of the box, the manual, a clickwrap, whatever. It isn't actually a legally binding agreement. Only a contract binds and there are rules that must be followed to have a binding contract. You must have an informed buyer and seller, you must have disclosure, a signature and most important an exchange of value between both parties. A EULA meets none of those tests.
> About why I can't accept Europe as a nation yet:
I have a simpler metric. When the EU is seated in the UN as the replacement for it's former member states, then it is a single country.
> The grandparent post was merely saying that violating an agreement is
> immoral.
True enough but this whole matter revolves around whether an agreement exists. When people disagree on such matters, that is where the Law comes into the discussion and it is very clear on the point.
The original poster holds that as the creator and owner of a work he has absolute power to dictate the terms and conditions it can be USED under, and that by purchasing his work I MUST agree to those terms. I hold that he doesn't own the work, only the limited power of the Copyright and that unless he can convince me to sign a contract stating otherwise, by purchasing a copy of his work I am free to read it, there being no agreement between us to the contrary.
> All well and good, but when you "buy" Windows XP in a store, you aren't
> buying Windows XP, you're buying a LICENSE to use Windows XP in binary
> form. Huge difference.
Still hung up on that misconception. No, a license is only in effect if I sign a contract changing the sale into a limited license. They can print "By buying this hammer you agree you will ONLY drive our brand of nails and strike no other object with this tool." on the side, stock the shelves of Home Depot with them and get exactly nowhere when they attempt to enforce their EULA. Because a sale is a sale unless there are signed contracts and consideration given and received.
> Compiling source code and selling it isn't a way to keep you from using
> it as you wish, it is a way to protect one's intellectual property.
"Intellectual Property" doesn't exist. I think this is where you are going off the reality track. What does exist are four related monopolies governments grant, in our case (USA for me, you might not be though) it is expressly "to promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts." Your code is NOT your property, only the Copyright, which is a grant of a monopoly in exchange for you creating and publishing (i.e. disclosing for all to see) the work. Keeping it secret does nothing to promote the progress of Science or the Usefull Arts.
We also have Patents which can protect your algorithm if it passes muster at the Patent Office but a Patent explicitly requires full disclosure of the patented invention, again to promote the progress of Science by allowing others to learn from your creation. The third option is the Trade Secret, which gets almost no government protection outside enforcing the contracts you enter into with those you disclose the secret to. The final item covered under the poorly named class called "Intellectual Property" is Trademarks, but that doesn't partain here.
> I am not required to give you every detail of a product when I sell
> or license it to you.
No you aren't, but if you are foolish enough to SELL me a copy of your product I am free to discover it's workings. It is called reverse engineering and it is a perfectly valid and ethical practice.
> If I was, you'd get the driver code when you bought an ATi card
Not at all, nothing requires ATI supply source unless the driver incorporated GPL code or something. However nothing stops the purchasers of ATI cards from reverse engineering them and writing their own, which happens to be the case for several of their cards, moreso for certain less open vendors.
> if you decompile a company's code, determine one of their algorithms,
> and then broadcast it (you said "discuss") to the world
Again, you mistake a grant of a limited monopoly with property. If I do not reproduce their copyrighted code I violate no law unless I signed a confidentiality agreement swearing to preserve their Trade Secrets. If the algorithm is patented it was already fully disclosed, otherwise their patent would be subject to being invalidated. You can't own an idea. In the interest of providing incentives to create new art and science we collectively, through our governments, grant limited monopolies.
> First you imply that the actual laws are irrelevant to your views on
> morality:
When a society is correctly operating, laws codify morals. In our current dystopia of the Law divorced from Truth and Justice that isn't always the case. It is the Right, nay it is the Duty, of every citizen in a free society to violate an unjust law as an act of civil disobiedience.
And yes, I have done so publicly, specifically by confessing to violating the DMCA by viewing DVDs on my laptop in a letter to President Bush in support of releasing Dmitry Sklyarov, in the vein of "Lets leave the Russians out of this, if you guys need a DMCA test case, try me."
> If you don't like the conditions of the offer, don't buy the product.
That is exactly what the Uniform Commercial Code is about, ensuring everyone knows and can agree in a meaningful way to the terms of the transaction. Without a signed contract specifying different terms though, the UCC says that a sale of goods transfers a clear title to those goods, meaning there can't be any conditions attached.
There is no way I or any other sane person would engage in trade if the terms of the transaction were unknown until after the deal was inrevokable, which is exactly the case the commercial software industry deludes itself into thinking is happening each time a shrinkwraped product is sold with a EULA inside or even worse, in the installer.
If you want your world, spend the money to make it happen. Pay Walmart enough for them to train their clerks to execute a proper contract (with legally required presales disclosures, etc.) each and every time a customer tries to buy your product, execute the proper legal paperwork so that Walmart and their minion has the legal power to engage in a contract in yoru name, etc. Otherwise deal with reality.
> So if you buy a copy of MS Office and figure out how to break the
> copy protection, you think it's OK to sell copies of the cracked
> version?
Of course not, it is a copyrighted work and outside a few defined exceptions, reproduction is a legal monopoly granted to the author. However I would consider myself free to DISCUSS the method of protection in use, up to and including disclosing how to defeat it.