Those laws could be used against someone who was powerless, but the current negotiators could not be touched, and neither could their governments, agents, assigns, etc.
Who'd bring the prosecution? Who'd pay for it? Who'd hear the case?
If you expect any justice, go read the history of the SCO vs IBM case, which is currently on hold until the SCO vs Novell case is settled. Notice how much it has already cost IBM, and calculate how much they will recover in damages.
But we can't have much effect on the members of our class in other countries. Not unless we go there personally.
Besides, there aren't actually members of our class in most other nations. Most nations divide society differently than most other nations.
We can easily and with (almost) mutual understanding talk about nations. Classes within the society are something else. They are a social creation and only exist within the society that created them. Other societies divide the world differently. (I think that's still true. I'm not certain, because there's been a lot of homogenization, but I think it's still true.)
20 years isn't long enough, but it's a good start. In the early days CDs promised a lifetime in the centuries, but that was when data was written on holes burned in metal foil (gold?) that was sandwiched between two glass disks.
P.S.: I've had mag tape that held up for 20 years. True, it was only at 800 BPI odd parity, and there were bad spots. But *almost* all the data was recovered. The even parity tapes were a bit less forgiving. (In 1980 something we needed to compare the current data against 1960 census data.)
One place it was used was in doubly linked lists. If you XOR the next and prior pointers together, then you only need to save one word of pointer information..at the cost of more complex retrieval and updating algorithms.
I think I got that trick from Knuth, but I'm not certain.
Which keeps longer if you stick it on the shelf and forget about it?
If you're thinking about backup, you should be concerned about long periods of time. 20 years at the bare minimum. Reports are that DVDs don't last that long. Disks freeze up and need expensive repair to recover the data. How do SSDs stack up here. (Don't judge by current capacity, we're in the very early days yet.)
P.S.: *I* don't know. If you do, I'd like to hear your answer.
At the time most of that code was written, 32K (words) was a large computer. You SQUEEZED the bits into words tightly. TIGHTLY. People recommended tricks like XORING two pointers together to save space, at the cost of additional computation. And mainframe computer time was in the neighborhood of $700/hour. And that was before several rounds of 12% inflation. At that time a paperback book cost between $0.50 and $0.75, to help you calibrate what that meant.
Also turnaround for many programmers was once per day via courier.
At that time two digit years were the appropriate choice. Four digit years didn't become reasonable, by and large, until the 1980's or even later. (Remember when we moved from mainframes to CP/M computers, our disk storage was trimmed to around 70KB. And our RAM was limited at 64KB. It wasn't until personal computers got hard disks that this limit was lifted. (Networked hard disks came later for most people.)
So for anything written after 1990, you might well have a point, but that's not the code you're dissing. Idiot.
The other respondent who said you should have blamed the managers was more reasonable. Unfortunately current management theory claims that managers don't need to know anything about what they're managing. So the individual managers, themselves, probably aren't to blame. I'd put the blame on the general managers, who should know better than to accept that theory. (Though at their level it becomes true. But a part of their job is to know how the job requirements change as the degree of separation form the actual work increases, and they generally fall down on that. Badly.)
I might believe it AFTER he's done it. And then I'll wonder what the side deals were, and how he made a profit at it.
I wouldn't necessarily disapprove. The goal is worthy, so making a profit isn't wrong...but what he did to make the profit may well be...and that's what I'd expect.
He's earned this skepticism by the side deals he's made with the Gates Foundation..."health care in exchange for you buy windows". I suspect many other side deals that didn't make the news, but enough did that I never trust his "charitable acts".
*ALL* freedom comes with restrictions. Sorry, that's a part of the nature of the universe. You can't even explicitly define a freedom that doesn't have restrictions.
There are treatments, remedial and preventative, but there is no solution. Everything that makes it easier to persist state makes it easier to spread infection. And if you can't persist state, of what use is the computer?
That said, some things are better choices than others. I, personally, would rank MSWind towards the dangerous end of the choices. And I, personally, don't find it any more useful than Linux. Some people, esp. those dependent on applications that don't exist on Linux, have other opinions. I don't believe they're right, but I can understand that from their point of view MSWind is valuable enough that they choose to prefer to risk the more dangerous choice.
It's worth saying that my choice of Linux as my preferred OS was not based on either safety or convenience. It was instigated by reading the EULA that came with MSWind2000, and realizing that I could not agree to those terms. Not even given that Linux, at that time, had no decent word processor. (Or possibly no decent one that I both knew about and could afford. (I preferred Aplixware over StarOffice, but I preferred Netscape composer over either. And that's NOT a good word processor.) As such my motives and reasons are different from those of most other people.
I would have guessed RH4.5. (I still don't know whether it happened to me or not. I did a fresh install of a later version and the troubles went away...but it might have been library conflicts rather than some kind of malware.)
Sorry, but the "Market share" lie isn't totally a lie. Linux can easily be distributed in an unsafe configuration. In fact it used to be, around 2000. This has changed over the years for all the major distributions.
However Linux is *RELATIVELY* safer. And the popular distributions are distributed in a RELATIVELY safe configuration. (Putting any numbers to that would go far beyond my competence.)
If you doubt the improvement in Linux safety, just consider that NFS was once active by default in most distributions. That infections were then rare was definitely due to the "market share lie" not being, precisely, a lie.
So you're saying they've finally fixed the problem of third-party applications that require running with administrator privileges?
(That's an honest question. It's been nearly a decade since I touched MSWind...and that was an older version at the time, so I know my knowledge isn't current.)
You can argue that if you want, but as long as the security measures that would work are prohibited I won't accept the argument.
My best answer is to give everyone their very own Live-CD...and a thumb-drive to insert when they want to persist something. (Yeah, I know it's not practical. People would just leave the thumb-drive in all the time. And forget it when they go leave the computer.)
The real answer is "circumstances alter cases". Different situations have different solutions that could reasonably work. But ALL workable solutions make it more difficult to persist state, and that's generally unacceptable. Given that limitation, no solution is possible. (Saving to an area that can't be executed from is, perhaps, the minimal useful restriction. And that's not sufficient, because scripts don't execute, but they can easily be Turing complete.. Do Java programs execute, i.e., does the OS believe that running a java program requires that the class file execute? I'd be surprised if the answer was yes.)
Yeah, but O'Reilly isn't a vendor of ebook readers...which is what I was talking about. I use Gutenprint more often than Safari, though, as when I'm using a technical book, I don't want it to take up screen space. That's sort of self-obstructing. (Not quite as bad as self-defeating.)
I *think* you've misread the deal. I understand it thusly: If Apple decides to sell a think at a 15% markup, they can. If someone else decides to sell it at a 10% markup, they can, and they can thereby undercut Apple's pricing. Apple is just saying "You can't charge us any more than you charge our competitors." I don't see anything about sale price in that.
N.B.: I only read the summary. So I could be misunderstanding this.
(Actually, that's just the first of around 4 blog posts, but you can find them by following the links from that page. The others are called things like CMAP#2.)
I, personally, prefer to not break the law. So I'm not interested in "buying" ebooks that I don't then own.
Of course, the other limits on e-books mean that they are only superior to paper books in a minority of situations. This means I'm not *that* interested in them anyway. But as I've given up on buying DVDs over DRM, I don't think that ebooks are likely to change my opinion, even if they *do* become the superior medium. (There's a couple of models I keep watching. If the prices drop enough, I may give them a test. The don't support DRM.)
N.B.: I make my decision on whether the readers support DRM. Not on whether they mandate it. If they *support* DRM, then I'm not interested, even for a purchase price of $0.02 (including shipping and handling).
I don't have current knowledge, but when I was in college there was no discrimination against my working the jobs that immigrants do. I just *REALLY* wanted to find a nicer job. Eventually I did, but yuck. The labor is both difficult and unpleasant. A decade earlier my mother had the same experience. (I worked in a cannery, she picked cotton.)
That experience has caused me to support a mimum wage that is a fixed fraction of the income of the wealthiest person in the country. And that covers ALL jobs. Including piecework. If your piecework rates fall below the minimum wage, you still get the minimum wage.
I do acknowledge that his might require import taxes, as I also want the economy to be balanced. And the taxes. But the disparity between the lowest paid and the highest paid is excessive. (I'm not quite sure how to figure those who are unemployed. But I am sure that it should apply to babes in arms as well as those who just don't have a job. Probably half the minimum wage or some such. Or figure what it costs to maintain someone in prison, and pay them 3/4 of that for just not being a criminal.)
N.B.: a part of the reason for this plan is that families where one of the adults stays home with the children raise children who are much better citizens. (On the average.)
Slashdot Mirror
What if the investigating official suspect that something is in violation of copyright, but doesn't know?
What proof is required?
What "due process" is required?
I wouldn't say it as "not bad". I'd say it was terrible. But I'm not a lawyer, so perhaps I'm wrong. But I doubt it.
Those laws could be used against someone who was powerless, but the current negotiators could not be touched, and neither could their governments, agents, assigns, etc.
Who'd bring the prosecution? Who'd pay for it? Who'd hear the case?
If you expect any justice, go read the history of the SCO vs IBM case, which is currently on hold until the SCO vs Novell case is settled. Notice how much it has already cost IBM, and calculate how much they will recover in damages.
But we can't have much effect on the members of our class in other countries. Not unless we go there personally.
Besides, there aren't actually members of our class in most other nations. Most nations divide society differently than most other nations.
We can easily and with (almost) mutual understanding talk about nations. Classes within the society are something else. They are a social creation and only exist within the society that created them. Other societies divide the world differently. (I think that's still true. I'm not certain, because there's been a lot of homogenization, but I think it's still true.)
It's not true that the managers count just dollars. They count sales, too. But only for the most recent quarter and the current one.
If you're going to count false teeth and hearing aids as making you a cyborg, why not count fillings and glasses?
It's not true that most geezers wear pacemakers. That's definitely a minority.
I know what you mean, but yes, 20 years.
20 years isn't long enough, but it's a good start. In the early days CDs promised a lifetime in the centuries, but that was when data was written on holes burned in metal foil (gold?) that was sandwiched between two glass disks.
P.S.: I've had mag tape that held up for 20 years. True, it was only at 800 BPI odd parity, and there were bad spots. But *almost* all the data was recovered. The even parity tapes were a bit less forgiving. (In 1980 something we needed to compare the current data against 1960 census data.)
One place it was used was in doubly linked lists. If you XOR the next and prior pointers together, then you only need to save one word of pointer information..at the cost of more complex retrieval and updating algorithms.
I think I got that trick from Knuth, but I'm not certain.
Captain Video. He had both spaceships and video phones.
I'm sure there were others, but most of the time we didn't have TV.
Which keeps longer if you stick it on the shelf and forget about it?
If you're thinking about backup, you should be concerned about long periods of time. 20 years at the bare minimum. Reports are that DVDs don't last that long. Disks freeze up and need expensive repair to recover the data. How do SSDs stack up here. (Don't judge by current capacity, we're in the very early days yet.)
P.S.: *I* don't know. If you do, I'd like to hear your answer.
You are an idiot.
At the time most of that code was written, 32K (words) was a large computer. You SQUEEZED the bits into words tightly. TIGHTLY. People recommended tricks like XORING two pointers together to save space, at the cost of additional computation. And mainframe computer time was in the neighborhood of $700/hour. And that was before several rounds of 12% inflation. At that time a paperback book cost between $0.50 and $0.75, to help you calibrate what that meant.
Also turnaround for many programmers was once per day via courier.
At that time two digit years were the appropriate choice. Four digit years didn't become reasonable, by and large, until the 1980's or even later. (Remember when we moved from mainframes to CP/M computers, our disk storage was trimmed to around 70KB. And our RAM was limited at 64KB. It wasn't until personal computers got hard disks that this limit was lifted. (Networked hard disks came later for most people.)
So for anything written after 1990, you might well have a point, but that's not the code you're dissing. Idiot.
The other respondent who said you should have blamed the managers was more reasonable. Unfortunately current management theory claims that managers don't need to know anything about what they're managing. So the individual managers, themselves, probably aren't to blame. I'd put the blame on the general managers, who should know better than to accept that theory. (Though at their level it becomes true. But a part of their job is to know how the job requirements change as the degree of separation form the actual work increases, and they generally fall down on that. Badly.)
I might believe it AFTER he's done it. And then I'll wonder what the side deals were, and how he made a profit at it.
I wouldn't necessarily disapprove. The goal is worthy, so making a profit isn't wrong...but what he did to make the profit may well be...and that's what I'd expect.
He's earned this skepticism by the side deals he's made with the Gates Foundation..."health care in exchange for you buy windows". I suspect many other side deals that didn't make the news, but enough did that I never trust his "charitable acts".
As I read it, the fuel is intended to be depleted uranium. So *THAT* problem won't occur. Doesn't say anything about other problems.
When I read it over, it looked pretty good. The only reason for being skeptical was that Bill Gates was involved...but that's enough.
Sorry, that comes with two kinds of restrictions:
1) as the donor you must have the right to so contribute it (e.g., owner of the copyright).
2) as the recipient you must not apply for a copyright on it.
I'm sure there are others, but those just appeared in my mind instantly.
It may not have been MS' problem, but it was definitely a problem for users of MS Software. Glad to hear they've fixed it.
*ALL* freedom comes with restrictions. Sorry, that's a part of the nature of the universe. You can't even explicitly define a freedom that doesn't have restrictions.
There is no answer.
There are treatments, remedial and preventative, but there is no solution. Everything that makes it easier to persist state makes it easier to spread infection. And if you can't persist state, of what use is the computer?
That said, some things are better choices than others. I, personally, would rank MSWind towards the dangerous end of the choices. And I, personally, don't find it any more useful than Linux. Some people, esp. those dependent on applications that don't exist on Linux, have other opinions. I don't believe they're right, but I can understand that from their point of view MSWind is valuable enough that they choose to prefer to risk the more dangerous choice.
It's worth saying that my choice of Linux as my preferred OS was not based on either safety or convenience. It was instigated by reading the EULA that came with MSWind2000, and realizing that I could not agree to those terms. Not even given that Linux, at that time, had no decent word processor. (Or possibly no decent one that I both knew about and could afford. (I preferred Aplixware over StarOffice, but I preferred Netscape composer over either. And that's NOT a good word processor.) As such my motives and reasons are different from those of most other people.
I would have guessed RH4.5. (I still don't know whether it happened to me or not. I did a fresh install of a later version and the troubles went away...but it might have been library conflicts rather than some kind of malware.)
Sorry, but the "Market share" lie isn't totally a lie. Linux can easily be distributed in an unsafe configuration. In fact it used to be, around 2000. This has changed over the years for all the major distributions.
However Linux is *RELATIVELY* safer. And the popular distributions are distributed in a RELATIVELY safe configuration. (Putting any numbers to that would go far beyond my competence.)
If you doubt the improvement in Linux safety, just consider that NFS was once active by default in most distributions. That infections were then rare was definitely due to the "market share lie" not being, precisely, a lie.
So you're saying they've finally fixed the problem of third-party applications that require running with administrator privileges?
(That's an honest question. It's been nearly a decade since I touched MSWind...and that was an older version at the time, so I know my knowledge isn't current.)
You can argue that if you want, but as long as the security measures that would work are prohibited I won't accept the argument.
My best answer is to give everyone their very own Live-CD...and a thumb-drive to insert when they want to persist something. (Yeah, I know it's not practical. People would just leave the thumb-drive in all the time. And forget it when they go leave the computer.)
The real answer is "circumstances alter cases". Different situations have different solutions that could reasonably work. But ALL workable solutions make it more difficult to persist state, and that's generally unacceptable. Given that limitation, no solution is possible. (Saving to an area that can't be executed from is, perhaps, the minimal useful restriction. And that's not sufficient, because scripts don't execute, but they can easily be Turing complete.. Do Java programs execute, i.e., does the OS believe that running a java program requires that the class file execute? I'd be surprised if the answer was yes.)
Yeah, but O'Reilly isn't a vendor of ebook readers...which is what I was talking about. I use Gutenprint more often than Safari, though, as when I'm using a technical book, I don't want it to take up screen space. That's sort of self-obstructing. (Not quite as bad as self-defeating.)
I *think* you've misread the deal. I understand it thusly: If Apple decides to sell a think at a 15% markup, they can. If someone else decides to sell it at a 10% markup, they can, and they can thereby undercut Apple's pricing. Apple is just saying "You can't charge us any more than you charge our competitors." I don't see anything about sale price in that.
N.B.: I only read the summary. So I could be misunderstanding this.
WRT: "Then they loose", I think you need to read
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/02/common-misconceptions-about-pu.html
by Charles Stross.
(Actually, that's just the first of around 4 blog posts, but you can find them by following the links from that page. The others are called things like CMAP#2.)
I, personally, prefer to not break the law. So I'm not interested in "buying" ebooks that I don't then own.
Of course, the other limits on e-books mean that they are only superior to paper books in a minority of situations. This means I'm not *that* interested in them anyway. But as I've given up on buying DVDs over DRM, I don't think that ebooks are likely to change my opinion, even if they *do* become the superior medium. (There's a couple of models I keep watching. If the prices drop enough, I may give them a test. The don't support DRM.)
N.B.: I make my decision on whether the readers support DRM. Not on whether they mandate it. If they *support* DRM, then I'm not interested, even for a purchase price of $0.02 (including shipping and handling).
I don't have current knowledge, but when I was in college there was no discrimination against my working the jobs that immigrants do. I just *REALLY* wanted to find a nicer job. Eventually I did, but yuck. The labor is both difficult and unpleasant. A decade earlier my mother had the same experience. (I worked in a cannery, she picked cotton.)
That experience has caused me to support a mimum wage that is a fixed fraction of the income of the wealthiest person in the country. And that covers ALL jobs. Including piecework. If your piecework rates fall below the minimum wage, you still get the minimum wage.
I do acknowledge that his might require import taxes, as I also want the economy to be balanced. And the taxes. But the disparity between the lowest paid and the highest paid is excessive. (I'm not quite sure how to figure those who are unemployed. But I am sure that it should apply to babes in arms as well as those who just don't have a job. Probably half the minimum wage or some such. Or figure what it costs to maintain someone in prison, and pay them 3/4 of that for just not being a criminal.)
N.B.: a part of the reason for this plan is that families where one of the adults stays home with the children raise children who are much better citizens. (On the average.)