The Secretary of State originally claimed that she 5pm Tuesday deadline was imposed by state law, and she had no choice but to enforce it. By telling her that she does have a choice, the judge made her responsible for justifying the fairness of her choice.
I would tag this as a work of great judicial discretion, which is not quite cowardice. He doesn't want to come down hard on either side until more facts are in. If the manual recounts are done on Friday and show that Gore has pulled ahead, and the SoS refuses to certify the revised results, then she'd better have a damn good reason. On the other hand, if the manual recounts still favor Bush, and the Democrats want to revise the tally yet again, they'd better have a damn good reason. --
Also, most criminals can't resist the urge to boast about their exploits. It's perfectly reasonable for a cop to hear someone say "this is how I think it was done" and suspect that the speaker meant "this is how I did it". That's not grounds for convicting anyone, but it's grounds for investigating further. --
A friend of mine suggested a very simple use: Add another back door to the code, recompile it, and distribute it as warez. In countries where most running copies of Windows are pirated, this could be very useful for the attacker.
If the attacker can get access to one of the facilities where legitimate copies of Windows get installed onto OEM machines, then things become much more insteresting. "Here's $5000. Now, please look the other way while I replace Microsoft's master CD with Folger's Crystals...." --
I would like to see a Presidential debate where each candidate could bring a laptop computer and consult it during the debate. "Well, I downloaded Senator Bedfellow's platform last night, and it clearly says here... on the other hand, if you look at the 2002 Federal budget, on this line...." --
First, it's not fair to judge Social Security by its "return on investment", because Social Security was never structured as an investment program. The first people to collect Social Security checks, back in the thirties, were people who never paid anything into the system. Flip side: if Social Security is replaced by an investment program where your payback is only based on your investments, the last people to pay taxes into Social Security will get nothing out of it, guaranteed. Do you want to be one of those last people? Do your relatives who are nearing retirement age want to be among those last people? Didn't think so.
Second, as streetlawyer pointed out, any way you slice it, today's retirees depend on the productivity of today's workers. Thought experiment: You have a 401(k) consisting of nothing but Microsoft stock. Suddenly, all Microsoft employees quit, and Microsoft can't find anyone else willing to work for them. What's going to happen to Microsoft's stock value? --
Take Social Security for example. There is no question that social security will go bankrupt, it is only a question of when.
Aside from streetlawyer's point above, which somebody should mod up, I refer you to "Antisocial Insecurity", from the Left Business Observer.
Summary: the prediction that Social Security will go bust assumes that economic growth over the next 75 years will be less than half what it was for the last 75. There's no justification for such a gloomy prediction, and if it comes true, then how can the stock market do any better? The article also addresses streetlawyer's "dependency ratio" argument.
Even if it turns out that Social Security is underfunded, Congress could patch the system perfectly well by making more income subject to Social Security tax (right now, wages over about $70K/year, and all capital gains, are exempt from the tax), by allowing in more (young, working) immigrants, or by pushing the retirement age up a year or two. --
In a capitalist society, the government's "social services" include protecting private property and enforcing contracts. Therefore, the more property you have, and the more you benefit from pieces of paper (such as stock options) that represent wealth, the more you benefit from the government. --
It would be kind of cool if, for example, I could do something like:
# tux2_transaction && make && make test && make install && tux2_commit
and then if there was a power failure in the middle of the build, I wouldn't have a build directory half-full of compiled files.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how useful this would be; it would be easy (I assume) to defer phase transitions for an entire file system until a moment convenient for the superuser, but it could degrade performance for all other users on the system, and to get around that problem, you'd have to do all the grunt work of implementing a multi-user relational database within your file system. --
In the US, most people either depend on a private insurance company for their health care, or have no insurance at all. In the UK, there's the taxpayer-funded National Health Service that covers everyone. What do private UK insurers offer that the government doesn't?
If the government gives everyone adequate care, and private insurers are only offering bonuses on top of that (private instead of semi-private hosptial rooms, shorter waiting lists for elective surgery, "alternative" medicine), then I, despite my devout pinko sentiments, don't care what the private insurers do. The rich people with bad genes can't get gold-plated health insurance, but neither can the poor people with good genes. BFD.
If the government's plan doesn't give adequate care, then I'd rather see that care improved than impose restrictions on the UK private health insurance industry.
What do I mean by "adequate care"? Umm, I'll get back to you on that. --
As I see it, Lanier doesn't say that transforming ourselves into trans-humans by 2020 is immoral. Rather, he says that it's unlikely to happen, because just throwing more MIPS at these technical problems is not going to solve them. --
Back in the Victorian era, a number of highly respected physicians said that a woman who want to college would become infertile, because her brain would become more developed at the expense of her reproductive organs. Why did otherwise intelligent people fall for such bogosity? Because it used the law of conservation of energy -- one of the, ahem, hot new scientific theories of the age -- as a metaphor for what was going on in a woman's body. These doctors treated the metaphor as sufficient proof for the theory, instead of looking for hard evidence that would demonstrate its truth or falsity.
I think a lot of flag-wavers for memetics, evolutionary psychology, etc. have fallen into the same trap. It's easy to construct a Just So Story to link your pet idea with the latest scientific trend, and then you can plaster your story all over the Internet and accuse doubters of being trapped by outmoded ways of thinking. It's much harder to do your homework, collect evidence that supports your theory or refutes alternatives, and then convince skeptical and educated peers. --
See this article on Crypto AG, a Swiss company that sold cryptographic devices. According to this article, the machines had backdoors installed by the NSA and its German counterpart; these were apparently used to eavesdrop on Iran (which arrested and tortured a Crypto AG sales rep when it realized what was going on), Ireland, and Argentina. --
Clarification: you do not own the copyright to the software on the CD.
For example, if the software contains an EULA saying "you may not reverse-engineer this software", and you never accept the EULA, then you have every right to reverse-engineer the software.
However, you don't have the right to burn copies of the CD and pass them out (except of course as permitted by "fair use"), because even without accepting an EULA, you are still bound by copyright law. (By the same token, if you get a copy of Newsweek in the mail, you can give it to a friend, but you can't distribute a zillion copies of the articles in it -- you own the physical magazine, but Newsweek's publisher owns the copyright.
Getting back to the CueCat: Whether or not you've consented to the ULA, the firmware inside the CueCat is protected by copyright law, and you can't, say, download the object code and then burn it onto chips at your own bar-code-reader factory. However, reverse engineering is not forbidden by copyright law, so if you don't consent to the ULA, you can reverse-engineer the CueCat protocol.
IANAL, of course, and I am ignoring the whole question about whether shrink-wrap licenses are ever enforceable. --
If you're downloading the microcode for the purpose of reverse-engineering their protocol, your right to do so is protected by copyright law (at least in the US). See the cases I cited earlier. --
All they asked from me was my address (which they also ask for whenever I buy anything there). --
"the real world" is a two-edged sword
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Why do you have legal and corporate maneuverings surrounding the Net that so many geeks find obnoxious? Because the Net can be used to make money, and so lots of people outside the geek world have an interest in it, and they try to affect it with their values.
Why do so many geeks have access to cushy jobs, fast modems, broadband Net connections at home, and cheap ISP services? Because the Net can be used to make money, and so lots of people outside the geek world have an interest in it, and they throw lots of money at it.
When you move from the little tidepool into the big ocean, you have a lot more places to eat, but you also have to deal with the sharks. --
Re:Who really needs a lesson
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· Score: 3
Yes, by golly, you're exactly right. Everyone else must learn to respect our geek values of freedom and privacy. By contrast, of course, we have nothing to learn from their values, which deserve all of the uninformed ridicule that we heap upon them.
When we achieve our rightful place as rulers of the world, we will seek out people who don't agree with those values, and put them in re-education camps until they become Geekishly Correct. --
I picked up a CueCat from a Radio Shack in Boston on Friday. My wife picked one up today. Nobody told us anything about being bound by any license agreement. If Digital Convergence really cared about protecting their IP in the hardware, they should have required Radio Shack to warn people of the licensing terms when they picked up the device -- especially after this whole thing broke on Friday. (If the EFF takes this case and wants people to give depositions, we're available.)
The catalog that Radio Shack gave me with the CueCat says, on the back cover, "come by a Radio Shack store and get your free:CAT scanning device", and on page 3, "You can pick up your:Cue:C.A.T. device FREE at any of over 7,000 participating RadioShack stores nationwide." (Boldface added.) Seems like Digital Convergence Legal needs to have a word with Radio Shack Marketing.
The sleeve with the CD-ROM does say "Opening this software constitutes acceptance of our License terms contained herein." However, I haven't opened the software, and there's nothing there about using the hardware constituting acceptance of the license.
It has come to Digital Convergence's attention that services/information being offered at such sites... are in conflict with intellectual property rights owned by Digital Convergence.
This is so vague, it makes me think that the lawyers (and Digital Convergence) don't really know what's going on. Somebody at Digital Convergence or its law firm probably saw that the Linux software was available, found out that someone outside the company had wrote them, and ASS-U-ME-D that you had copied their software.
So if your code looks nothing like theirs, they won't be able to prove that you violated their copyright by posting it, and everything will be copacetic.
Of course, IANAL.
And I'm glad I downloaded that stuff yesterday. --
I wonder if they changed this because they thought it would bring in more customers, or because the credit card companies (or the government agencies that regulate them) don't want consumers to waive their right to ask for charge-backs.
If your network consists of one or two computers, there will likely be little of value here.
The above sentence just isn't true.
Amen. I have three Linux boxes connected via Ethernet, with one of them having a dialup Net connection. I thought I was familiar with Unix before I started setting this stuff up, but there's a long hike between writing a Perl script to generate your.sig file and diagnosing the latest reason why sendmail is just sneering at you instead of delivering your email. --
Slashdot Mirror
I would tag this as a work of great judicial discretion, which is not quite cowardice. He doesn't want to come down hard on either side until more facts are in. If the manual recounts are done on Friday and show that Gore has pulled ahead, and the SoS refuses to certify the revised results, then she'd better have a damn good reason. On the other hand, if the manual recounts still favor Bush, and the Democrats want to revise the tally yet again, they'd better have a damn good reason.
--
--
Also, most criminals can't resist the urge to boast about their exploits. It's perfectly reasonable for a cop to hear someone say "this is how I think it was done" and suspect that the speaker meant "this is how I did it". That's not grounds for convicting anyone, but it's grounds for investigating further.
--
If the attacker can get access to one of the facilities where legitimate copies of Windows get installed onto OEM machines, then things become much more insteresting. "Here's $5000. Now, please look the other way while I replace Microsoft's master CD with Folger's Crystals...."
--
--
I would like to see a Presidential debate where each candidate could bring a laptop computer and consult it during the debate. "Well, I downloaded Senator Bedfellow's platform last night, and it clearly says here ... on the other hand, if you look at the 2002 Federal budget, on this line...."
--
Second, as streetlawyer pointed out, any way you slice it, today's retirees depend on the productivity of today's workers. Thought experiment: You have a 401(k) consisting of nothing but Microsoft stock. Suddenly, all Microsoft employees quit, and Microsoft can't find anyone else willing to work for them. What's going to happen to Microsoft's stock value?
--
Summary: the prediction that Social Security will go bust assumes that economic growth over the next 75 years will be less than half what it was for the last 75. There's no justification for such a gloomy prediction, and if it comes true, then how can the stock market do any better? The article also addresses streetlawyer's "dependency ratio" argument.
Even if it turns out that Social Security is underfunded, Congress could patch the system perfectly well by making more income subject to Social Security tax (right now, wages over about $70K/year, and all capital gains, are exempt from the tax), by allowing in more (young, working) immigrants, or by pushing the retirement age up a year or two.
--
In a capitalist society, the government's "social services" include protecting private property and enforcing contracts. Therefore, the more property you have, and the more you benefit from pieces of paper (such as stock options) that represent wealth, the more you benefit from the government.
--
# tux2_transaction && make && make test && make install && tux2_commit
and then if there was a power failure in the middle of the build, I wouldn't have a build directory half-full of compiled files.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how useful this would be; it would be easy (I assume) to defer phase transitions for an entire file system until a moment convenient for the superuser, but it could degrade performance for all other users on the system, and to get around that problem, you'd have to do all the grunt work of implementing a multi-user relational database within your file system.
--
If the government gives everyone adequate care, and private insurers are only offering bonuses on top of that (private instead of semi-private hosptial rooms, shorter waiting lists for elective surgery, "alternative" medicine), then I, despite my devout pinko sentiments, don't care what the private insurers do. The rich people with bad genes can't get gold-plated health insurance, but neither can the poor people with good genes. BFD.
If the government's plan doesn't give adequate care, then I'd rather see that care improved than impose restrictions on the UK private health insurance industry.
What do I mean by "adequate care"? Umm, I'll get back to you on that.
--
As I see it, Lanier doesn't say that transforming ourselves into trans-humans by 2020 is immoral. Rather, he says that it's unlikely to happen, because just throwing more MIPS at these technical problems is not going to solve them.
--
I think a lot of flag-wavers for memetics, evolutionary psychology, etc. have fallen into the same trap. It's easy to construct a Just So Story to link your pet idea with the latest scientific trend, and then you can plaster your story all over the Internet and accuse doubters of being trapped by outmoded ways of thinking. It's much harder to do your homework, collect evidence that supports your theory or refutes alternatives, and then convince skeptical and educated peers.
--
See this article on Crypto AG, a Swiss company that sold cryptographic devices. According to this article, the machines had backdoors installed by the NSA and its German counterpart; these were apparently used to eavesdrop on Iran (which arrested and tortured a Crypto AG sales rep when it realized what was going on), Ireland, and Argentina.
--
For example, if the software contains an EULA saying "you may not reverse-engineer this software", and you never accept the EULA, then you have every right to reverse-engineer the software.
However, you don't have the right to burn copies of the CD and pass them out (except of course as permitted by "fair use"), because even without accepting an EULA, you are still bound by copyright law. (By the same token, if you get a copy of Newsweek in the mail, you can give it to a friend, but you can't distribute a zillion copies of the articles in it -- you own the physical magazine, but Newsweek's publisher owns the copyright.
Getting back to the CueCat: Whether or not you've consented to the ULA, the firmware inside the CueCat is protected by copyright law, and you can't, say, download the object code and then burn it onto chips at your own bar-code-reader factory. However, reverse engineering is not forbidden by copyright law, so if you don't consent to the ULA, you can reverse-engineer the CueCat protocol.
IANAL, of course, and I am ignoring the whole question about whether shrink-wrap licenses are ever enforceable.
--
See this comment for a link to the more-restrictive EULA that was posted about two weks ago.
--
If you're downloading the microcode for the purpose of reverse-engineering their protocol, your right to do so is protected by copyright law (at least in the US). See the cases I cited earlier.
--
All they asked from me was my address (which they also ask for whenever I buy anything there).
--
Why do so many geeks have access to cushy jobs, fast modems, broadband Net connections at home, and cheap ISP services? Because the Net can be used to make money, and so lots of people outside the geek world have an interest in it, and they throw lots of money at it.
When you move from the little tidepool into the big ocean, you have a lot more places to eat, but you also have to deal with the sharks.
--
When we achieve our rightful place as rulers of the world, we will seek out people who don't agree with those values, and put them in re-education camps until they become Geekishly Correct.
--
--
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So if your code looks nothing like theirs, they won't be able to prove that you violated their copyright by posting it, and everything will be copacetic.
Of course, IANAL.
And I'm glad I downloaded that stuff yesterday.
--
By the way, aside from the charge-backs, PayPal customers now have insurance against unauthorized withdrawals.
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