What about all the spam originating from servers outside the U.S
The way things are going, everywhere outside of the US will have a real anti-spam law before the US does. This opt out piece of crud doesn't qualify as anti-spam.
While Americans are running around saying "spam will come from other countries that won't fall in line and ban spam", they fail to realise that the US is the very country that isn't falling in line and banning spam as is being done outside the US.
I doubt IETF is going to side with marketers here.
I doubt the IETF will do anything. Their structure and conduct is such that they couldn't organise getting laid in a brothel. The Commission will have to go forward without IETF help.
Hell, there was more productive protocol and standardisation work done per week before the formalisation of the IETF than gets done per year now.
Why would you have to say no all these times? It's a single registry!
Checking the text of the Bill, it appears it doesn't require compliance with the registry - it only requires the FTC to investigate and possibly create the registry. Thus the registry will be there, but there will be no obligation on spammers to use it. This makes the registry rather useless.
Higher Functioning Autism: Part of the (suspected, yet to be proved) Autism Spectrum. Typically, the person will be extremely brilliant at a very few things. They will be prone to information overload, and often learn quickly to focus on very specific things. They're oblivious to anything outside of that, or near enough.
So now we know why some people go on to get a PhD.
But sending NASA an invoice that they pay might....
Not a chance. A right to property comes either from having possession of the thing, or claiming through (for example, buying from, inheriting from, receiving a gift from) a person who has or had possession of the thing. No possession, no property. If they haven't physically been to the asteroid and done something there to demonstrate possession of it, they there's just no possible legal claim - it doesn't matter how many other people they fool.
It was probably a bad sign when the caterpillar on top of the mushroom told me to ead one side to grow taller and the other side to grow shorter, and I guess I should have stopped right there. Of course the mistakes started earlier. Following the white rabbit in the waistcoat and pocket watch was a bad idea, and falling down the hole was bad. But drinking the bottle labelled "drink me" and eating the cake labelled "eat me" was probably not the wisest thing I've ever done.
I thought it had gotten pretty bad by the time I was playing croquet with the Queen of Hearts and the rest of her deck of cards, and using flamingoes as croquet sticks and hedgehogs as croquet balls, but now that I've seen this whole SCO drama unfold to the point where they'll pay people just not to use Linux, it's clear that my senses have taken a severe departure from the normal world.
Would somebody point me to the way out of Wonderland, of if appropriate, to the nearest suitable medical facility?
You need to show a working implementation of something in order for it to be considered prior art.
You most certainly do not... You merely need to show a description of it sufficient that someone "skilled in the art" could produce it.
Actually, there are two elements to this. A patent needs to be for something that is novel (new) and inventive (not obvious).
Prior art is something actually implemented that shows the thing is not new (not novel). It's the easiest way to invalidate a patent if you can find it.
A prior description, if of the exact same thing, will clearly show the thing is obvious since it was previously described. The real difficulty applies when you have to collect information from multiple sources to show non-obviousness. Courts are incredibly bad at recognising what would be obvious to somebody "skilled in the art". They use expert witnesses for this. The patent holder will produce an expert witness (who usually will be somebody who will say whatever is necessary to earn their fees, or so stupid or unskilled in the art as to believe the obvious is not obvious). The party seeking to invalidate will also produce an expert witness.
The judges seem more inclined to believe the patent holder's witnesses, alleging that the other side's witness doesn't understand the concept of obviousness in patent law.
Now sometimes that's true. Part of the problem that the expert witnesses opposing the patent rarely know how to express their testimony in a way to show the judge that they do understand the concept of obviousness. A lot more patents could probably be overturned if patent challengers would just use expert witnesses skilled in both intellectual property law and the relevant technology. Unfortunately such people are rare.
Please explain how "sparing a thought" for someone who can been conned does them the slightest bit of good?
There is reputedly a saying among con artists - "you can't con an honest man." The Nigerian scams are a prime example of this. A core part of the scam is that the victim thinks the money is coming from a breach of the law. The victims are not only stupid, but dishonest, and thoroughly deserve to lose their money.
On the other hand the perpetrators are also crooks, and deserve their punishment.
Of course there is a different situation when the victim uses somebody else's funds to participate in the scam, as has been known to happen - then an innocent party loses out to two crooks.
Yes, but modern multinational corporations have a power to exercise their greed that was impossible historically without being an expansionist dictator.
If a major underpinning of the Internet like DNS were commercialized, there would be no reason to disallow it at any other level.
If DNS were commercialised by allowing Verisign to do what they wish with it we'd pretty soon see very good reasons to disallow it at other levels. Verisign's power over the DNS doesn't come from ICANN or the department of commerce. It comes from the fact that people point their named.ca at root servers that delegate certain domains to Verisign. Verisign's conduct is sufficiently objectionable that it is not out of the question that an alternate root server heirarchy could spring up and take a substantial chunk of the servers on the net. There are several organisations in a position to lead such a break-away. ISC would be one, but it is far from the only one. Google would be another. Microsoft and AOL could combine to create a new DNS backbone and make Verisign obsolete overnight.
Verisign are playing fast and loose with the paltry amount of credibility they retain. What they don't realise, is that their position remains only for as long as a significant volume of people believe they can be trusted. We know they are not trustworthy, but their recent conduct is demonstrating it to others as well.
I have one that I picked up at an old data-entry summer job.
I have an abacus that was given to me by my grandfather. I believe he bought it in Malaya in WWII. This would be consistent with the documentation, which was printed on paper that I had only seen in one other book - an English-Malay dictionary from the same period.
I can't think of a single time that I've found knowing the last time a file has been accessed to be useful.
It can be very useful. One application is where you have a relatively old directory tree and are wondering if it's in active use. By finding the access time and date of the most recently used file you can make a decision to prune the tree.
Actually, the way it sounds, there was no contract, in writing or otherwise.
When you agree to let a headhunter introduce you to an employer, there is a contract. Your comment merely goes to whether the representation was part of the contract, and what the representation was. It is at least arguable that the representation was a part of the contract. If it was a representation that "[the employer] generally gave $6k for relocation", it was clearly a false representation due to the lack of qualification (that it only applied to certain positions, notably not the one he was applying for). If the representation was false and was part of the contract, then it is a breach regardless of where the money was expected to come from.
Even if the term didn't form part of the contract, the representation, being false, and the knowledge of the agency being such that they either did or should have known it to be false, would have been made either intentionally or negligently. Either way, there is potential liability (either in deceit or in negligence).
despite the media claiming he left of his own accord, everyone in politics knows that he was pushed, due to his own ineptitude.
Not true. Check his bio. He's 61 now. It's not surprising he didn't want to stay in Parliament much longer. Australian politicians (unlike their American counterparts) tend to retire close to the community retirement age, if not earlier.
Often a retiring politician will find outside employment in areas such as public speaking, non-executive board membership, diplomacy, or in the case of Alston he may want to return to the Bar.
Direct Marketing Association likes it, then something is wrong. Odds are, there's a weasel clause that basically defines spam as "that which the DMA doesn't do"
This is the Australian Direct Marketing Association, not their evil American cousins. The DMAs outside the US have basically come to the conclusion that Bob Wietzen (head of the DMA in the USA) is a world class moron without the first shadow of a clue on what should be done about spam.
If you register on a supermarket's web site for home delivery, that supermarket can send you special offer emails because it might be inferred you are interested in them.
This sort of conduct is (already) covered by the Privacy Act rather than this proposed legislation. The reason is that it's thought the nature of the problems have enough differences that there should be different approaches to dealing with them.
No, charities, religious organisiations and political parties are exempt. It's extraordinarily difficult to become a charity in law, and basically impossible to become a charity in such a way as to work around the provisions in this Bill. Becoming a registered political party is difficult too (although I would be surprised if some of the restrictions on becoming a political party weren't ruled unconstitutional if somebody were to challenge them). Becoming a religious organisation might be easier in principle, but if the religious aspect is a sham, then it won't be a religious organisation in the law (that is, it's not enough to *say* you are a religious organisation - religion would have to be a significant part of the organisation's activities).
Unfortunately I am having a hard time putting into words just how appalling VeriSign's conduct is. I've given it a go anyway, but I don't think I've quite managed to get there. I think that in the attempt I can put ICANN's role in a context which demonstrates that they really do not have a choice but to act here.
That'll help. ICANN are so corrupted they're sleeping in the same bed as Verisign.
I would go futher. VeriSign is a wantonly criminal organisation. Clearly their renewal notice scam was criminal.
This latest action strikes me as criminal too. Arguably ICANN is in the position of managing a public office - certainly its establishment was managed by numerous governments internationally. If ICANN's role is a public office role, then VeriSign's role in managing the domain names is also a public office.
The use of a public office for the private profit of the holder of that office is a crime (except to the extent that private profit is authorised - and VeriSign is authorised to a very limited private profit on each domain name registered). Even where it's not a crime under a statute, it is almost certainly a common law crime. Further, it is a heinous crime - no, it's not violent, but it's heinous because it undermines the legitimacy of the office granted by the people through the State. It is only one step down from treason.
These crimes could not have been committed by VeriSign without either the complicity or the gross negligence of their board of directors. In my view, that renders the entire VeriSign board criminals. Let me make that clear: based on VeriSign's current and past actions, I consider that Stratton Sclavos, George Haddad, Aristotle Balogh, Dana Evan, Bill Fasig, Quentin Gallivan, Robert J. Korzeniewski, Vernon Irvin, Russell Lewis, Judy Lin, W.G. Champion Mitchell, and James Ulam are criminals. They have been either knowingly, or with gross negligence, involved in the criminal abuse of a public office for private profit. That makes them criminals of the worst order.
This of course ignores the issue of whether this is likely to lead to violation of the trademarks of others - it would seem that such violations are an inevitable result of this course of action.
Now, if ICANN sit idly by, as the body entrusted with the administration and delegation of this public office, they become enablers of this criminal abuse. They know what's going on. They physically can stop it. Yes, it might be done in breach of contract, but VeriSign can sue ICANN if they think they can win on that - I personally doubt they can because the way in which VeriSign has carried out the contract is illegal and would appear to be a repudiation of the responsibilities that necessarily go along with occupying that office. But regardless, ICANN has both the capability and the duty to put an end to this abuse, and given the seriousness of it, they must do so.
Any time the government down here does anything 'net related it's heavy handed, overkill, and generally not thought out.
I have seen the draft Bill, and although I'm under an NDA for the most part (I can't give details, but can speak broadly about what it does), let me assure you that it's very well thought out. In fact it's probably the most carefully drafted legislation I've ever seen. The ban on "list generation software" is a ban on attempts to do things like try every name from adam to zack at a domain, and on dictionary attacks.
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The way things are going, everywhere outside of the US will have a real anti-spam law before the US does. This opt out piece of crud doesn't qualify as anti-spam.
While Americans are running around saying "spam will come from other countries that won't fall in line and ban spam", they fail to realise that the US is the very country that isn't falling in line and banning spam as is being done outside the US.
I doubt the IETF will do anything. Their structure and conduct is such that they couldn't organise getting laid in a brothel. The Commission will have to go forward without IETF help.
Hell, there was more productive protocol and standardisation work done per week before the formalisation of the IETF than gets done per year now.
Checking the text of the Bill, it appears it doesn't require compliance with the registry - it only requires the FTC to investigate and possibly create the registry. Thus the registry will be there, but there will be no obligation on spammers to use it. This makes the registry rather useless.
So now we know why some people go on to get a PhD.
Not a chance. A right to property comes either from having possession of the thing, or claiming through (for example, buying from, inheriting from, receiving a gift from) a person who has or had possession of the thing. No possession, no property. If they haven't physically been to the asteroid and done something there to demonstrate possession of it, they there's just no possible legal claim - it doesn't matter how many other people they fool.
I thought it had gotten pretty bad by the time I was playing croquet with the Queen of Hearts and the rest of her deck of cards, and using flamingoes as croquet sticks and hedgehogs as croquet balls, but now that I've seen this whole SCO drama unfold to the point where they'll pay people just not to use Linux, it's clear that my senses have taken a severe departure from the normal world.
Would somebody point me to the way out of Wonderland, of if appropriate, to the nearest suitable medical facility?
You most certainly do not... You merely need to show a description of it sufficient that someone "skilled in the art" could produce it.
Actually, there are two elements to this. A patent needs to be for something that is novel (new) and inventive (not obvious).
Prior art is something actually implemented that shows the thing is not new (not novel). It's the easiest way to invalidate a patent if you can find it.
A prior description, if of the exact same thing, will clearly show the thing is obvious since it was previously described. The real difficulty applies when you have to collect information from multiple sources to show non-obviousness. Courts are incredibly bad at recognising what would be obvious to somebody "skilled in the art". They use expert witnesses for this. The patent holder will produce an expert witness (who usually will be somebody who will say whatever is necessary to earn their fees, or so stupid or unskilled in the art as to believe the obvious is not obvious). The party seeking to invalidate will also produce an expert witness.
The judges seem more inclined to believe the patent holder's witnesses, alleging that the other side's witness doesn't understand the concept of obviousness in patent law.
Now sometimes that's true. Part of the problem that the expert witnesses opposing the patent rarely know how to express their testimony in a way to show the judge that they do understand the concept of obviousness. A lot more patents could probably be overturned if patent challengers would just use expert witnesses skilled in both intellectual property law and the relevant technology. Unfortunately such people are rare.
There is reputedly a saying among con artists - "you can't con an honest man." The Nigerian scams are a prime example of this. A core part of the scam is that the victim thinks the money is coming from a breach of the law. The victims are not only stupid, but dishonest, and thoroughly deserve to lose their money.
On the other hand the perpetrators are also crooks, and deserve their punishment.
Of course there is a different situation when the victim uses somebody else's funds to participate in the scam, as has been known to happen - then an innocent party loses out to two crooks.
Yes, but modern multinational corporations have a power to exercise their greed that was impossible historically without being an expansionist dictator.
Where the hell have you been for the past 5 years? This is far from the first sign of evil from Verisign, and it will be far from the last.
If DNS were commercialised by allowing Verisign to do what they wish with it we'd pretty soon see very good reasons to disallow it at other levels. Verisign's power over the DNS doesn't come from ICANN or the department of commerce. It comes from the fact that people point their named.ca at root servers that delegate certain domains to Verisign. Verisign's conduct is sufficiently objectionable that it is not out of the question that an alternate root server heirarchy could spring up and take a substantial chunk of the servers on the net. There are several organisations in a position to lead such a break-away. ISC would be one, but it is far from the only one. Google would be another. Microsoft and AOL could combine to create a new DNS backbone and make Verisign obsolete overnight.
Verisign are playing fast and loose with the paltry amount of credibility they retain. What they don't realise, is that their position remains only for as long as a significant volume of people believe they can be trusted. We know they are not trustworthy, but their recent conduct is demonstrating it to others as well.
I have an abacus that was given to me by my grandfather. I believe he bought it in Malaya in WWII. This would be consistent with the documentation, which was printed on paper that I had only seen in one other book - an English-Malay dictionary from the same period.
It can be very useful. One application is where you have a relatively old directory tree and are wondering if it's in active use. By finding the access time and date of the most recently used file you can make a decision to prune the tree.
When you agree to let a headhunter introduce you to an employer, there is a contract. Your comment merely goes to whether the representation was part of the contract, and what the representation was. It is at least arguable that the representation was a part of the contract. If it was a representation that "[the employer] generally gave $6k for relocation", it was clearly a false representation due to the lack of qualification (that it only applied to certain positions, notably not the one he was applying for). If the representation was false and was part of the contract, then it is a breach regardless of where the money was expected to come from.
Even if the term didn't form part of the contract, the representation, being false, and the knowledge of the agency being such that they either did or should have known it to be false, would have been made either intentionally or negligently. Either way, there is potential liability (either in deceit or in negligence).
To hell with my karma...
What's new? They put Bush into office didn't they?
You are mistaken. There was a contract, it just wasn't in writing.
Not true. Check his bio. He's 61 now. It's not surprising he didn't want to stay in Parliament much longer. Australian politicians (unlike their American counterparts) tend to retire close to the community retirement age, if not earlier.
Often a retiring politician will find outside employment in areas such as public speaking, non-executive board membership, diplomacy, or in the case of Alston he may want to return to the Bar.
This is the Australian Direct Marketing Association, not their evil American cousins. The DMAs outside the US have basically come to the conclusion that Bob Wietzen (head of the DMA in the USA) is a world class moron without the first shadow of a clue on what should be done about spam.
This sort of conduct is (already) covered by the Privacy Act rather than this proposed legislation. The reason is that it's thought the nature of the problems have enough differences that there should be different approaches to dealing with them.
No, charities, religious organisiations and political parties are exempt. It's extraordinarily difficult to become a charity in law, and basically impossible to become a charity in such a way as to work around the provisions in this Bill. Becoming a registered political party is difficult too (although I would be surprised if some of the restrictions on becoming a political party weren't ruled unconstitutional if somebody were to challenge them). Becoming a religious organisation might be easier in principle, but if the religious aspect is a sham, then it won't be a religious organisation in the law (that is, it's not enough to *say* you are a religious organisation - religion would have to be a significant part of the organisation's activities).
That'll help. ICANN are so corrupted they're sleeping in the same bed as Verisign.
I would go futher. VeriSign is a wantonly criminal organisation. Clearly their renewal notice scam was criminal.
This latest action strikes me as criminal too. Arguably ICANN is in the position of managing a public office - certainly its establishment was managed by numerous governments internationally. If ICANN's role is a public office role, then VeriSign's role in managing the domain names is also a public office.
The use of a public office for the private profit of the holder of that office is a crime (except to the extent that private profit is authorised - and VeriSign is authorised to a very limited private profit on each domain name registered). Even where it's not a crime under a statute, it is almost certainly a common law crime. Further, it is a heinous crime - no, it's not violent, but it's heinous because it undermines the legitimacy of the office granted by the people through the State. It is only one step down from treason.
These crimes could not have been committed by VeriSign without either the complicity or the gross negligence of their board of directors. In my view, that renders the entire VeriSign board criminals. Let me make that clear: based on VeriSign's current and past actions, I consider that Stratton Sclavos, George Haddad, Aristotle Balogh, Dana Evan, Bill Fasig, Quentin Gallivan, Robert J. Korzeniewski, Vernon Irvin, Russell Lewis, Judy Lin, W.G. Champion Mitchell, and James Ulam are criminals. They have been either knowingly, or with gross negligence, involved in the criminal abuse of a public office for private profit. That makes them criminals of the worst order.
This of course ignores the issue of whether this is likely to lead to violation of the trademarks of others - it would seem that such violations are an inevitable result of this course of action.
Now, if ICANN sit idly by, as the body entrusted with the administration and delegation of this public office, they become enablers of this criminal abuse. They know what's going on. They physically can stop it. Yes, it might be done in breach of contract, but VeriSign can sue ICANN if they think they can win on that - I personally doubt they can because the way in which VeriSign has carried out the contract is illegal and would appear to be a repudiation of the responsibilities that necessarily go along with occupying that office. But regardless, ICANN has both the capability and the duty to put an end to this abuse, and given the seriousness of it, they must do so.
It does, along with any other attempt somebody would make to try to find a way around the law.
Unfortunately I can't be more specific than this, but the draft bill deals rationally with all of the examples you have described.
I have seen the draft Bill, and although I'm under an NDA for the most part (I can't give details, but can speak broadly about what it does), let me assure you that it's very well thought out. In fact it's probably the most carefully drafted legislation I've ever seen. The ban on "list generation software" is a ban on attempts to do things like try every name from adam to zack at a domain, and on dictionary attacks.
If it encounters a file with an unknown extension that has a blank first line, it gets a divide by zero (line 64 of shredtree.c).