Yes because we haven't dilluted the overall TLD structure enough already. It used to be that.org,.edu,.com,.net and.gov had distinct, unique purposes. Now we have.biz,.info and.name? Please, someone tell me what these new TLD's add to the overall namespace (aside from ongoing legal battles over trademarks).
I don't know why these people think that "no late fees" means you don't have to return the movie when it's due anymore. Just because you don't have to pay a penalty fee doesn't mean the rules cease to apply.
And the restocking fee for a rental is a lot less bullshit than the restocking fees at Best Buy for something I actually bought!
I LOVE the no late fees policy. I usually return my movies on time, but there's always that one time you forget to take it in on the way to work and you can only drop it off in the evening. Now I don't get bitten by the "hour-late" fee.
Is this a private school or a state school? The answer determines how much you have in the way of legal rights at the school.
A private school can ban free speech, force all their students to wear uniforms and only use their computer network for "sanctioned" purposes. If it's a state school, you might be able to spin a "free speech" angle out of this. Check with the EFF or local ACLU for help.
If it's a private school, sorry, you're SOL. You have no rights because you're using private property and are subject to the owner's rules.
I notice the story summary didn't have the "soul-sucking-registration" disclaimer. Is that kind of joking reserved only for the NYTimes.com site? At least NYTimes.com is still free (and you can always skip the registration by redirecting through Google). Also, I noticed no one here has posted the plain text of the article like they do for the NY Times stories. What gives?
I agree. I shelled out $5 for Debian on CD. I should be able to do whatever I
want with it, including redistribute only the binaries to people, without any source code. Or modify the source code, build binaries, and ship only those binaries to people. Why not? I paid for it. Who the hell is this Stallman guy who thinks he can tell me what I get to do with something I bought? Sounds like another Jack Valenti to me.
That's a specious argument. People aren't pissed off at Digital Restrictions Management because they want to pirate music or movies or whatever.
They're pissed off because they can't make a backup copy and there's no warranty on the original
They're pissed because they can't resell their used copy if they don't want it any more
They're pissed off because they used to be able to do these things and now it's being taken away from them
Don't get me wrong, I'm pro-copyright (although 90 years + the life of the artist is a little much). I agree that trading copyrighted anything online is illegal (movies, music, books, software, whatever). But that's not what DRM is about. DRM is about taking away the rights of the end-user -- by destroying the principle of first sale. DRM tells the end user, we think you're a thief, so we're going to protect you from yourself.
I'm all for the RIAA lawsuits -- because that's how you protect copyright. I'm all for FSF lawsuits against GPL violators because that's how you protect copyright. If Red Hat DRM'd my Enterprise Linux CDs, I'd still look for a way to break the DRM and make a backup copy because I bought a usable copy of software.
Of course this is all academic, anyway. I've always said, "as long as something can be seen, heard or otherwise processed by humans, it can always be duplicated." New DRM schemes will be broken. The "Trusted Computing" machines will be cracked -- because necessity is the mother of invention.
For this law to be effective, the ISP's will also have to block any mirror sites (goggle cache, archive.org). There is also the problem with people running home servers, and saving cached images on a publicly accessible server.
Ah, but the ISPs aren't interested in making this law effective (and why should they be, it's prima facia bullshit).
You aren't obligated to respect the spirit of the law, just the letter of it. So, the ISPs will only have to do the bare minimum to comply. Screw the Google caches and the open relays. If the site doesn't appear on the list, they don't have to block it.
this law states that ISPs must provide parents pr0n-filtering/blocking software for free if requested?
Yes, but it also infers that companies can force ALL their customers to pay for it by hiking their rates. I don't want to be paying for someone else's censorship.
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Well, in those days Mars was a dreary uninhabitable wasteland much like Utah, but unlike Utah Mars was eventually made livable.
The NY Times had a great article yesterday on how the Bush administration is doing everything it can to manipulate the media and public opinion through carefully managed propogada campaigns. So color me surprised when the Justice Department can't find any abuses of the PATRIOT act that just happen to give the DOJ incredible Orwellian powers.
When I have to use Windows, I use Firefox. But on my main desktops (work & home) I use Mozilla on Linux.
I guess that would be another thing I would add to my list:
Menu consistency. If someone running Windows has a question about Mozilla, I am 100% where all the config options are. Just today, someone accidently turned their image-blocking on for a certain url and asked me why they couldn't see images on a certain website. He was running Firefox, so I had to dig around in his menus a little bit before I could find the Image Manager.
Don't get me wrong, Firefox is great. I just like having the choice of using Mozilla. Sad to see it go.:( Hopefully it'll fork.
The Mozilla web page editor. I don't actually write web pages using it, but I do like to hit Ctrl-E every now and then to show coworkers the underlying table structure of a page. It's just a handy visual tool. Especially when I'm doing webdev.
The sidebars. I don't know about you, but I love custom sidebars. I have one for MapQuest, one for IMDb and one for Lorem Ipsum.
Edit->Preferences. The only reason Options is under Tools in Firefox is because it's trying to mimic IE.:)
Mozilla Tools:
Translate Page
Cookie Manager
Image Manager
Popup Manager
Form Manager
Password Manager
Download Manager
The File dialog. I'm sure the new open/save file dialog is easier for easily confused users, but I like having all the file managing options ready when the dialog first opens.
I guess you could call Mozilla the programmer's web browser. Feature rich and not ashamed of it.
In any sufficiently large corporation, having the right hand not talk to the left hand is par for the course. I'd wager that the people who setup the adwords pages didn't know about Google's rules for cloaking or keyword stuffing -- or they thought the rules didn't apply internally. More importantly, they didn't ask anyone. It happens all the time:
The technical or editorial teams setup the rules of the game for how their site will behave and how users will interact with the site; and then the business or sales team makes some decision without consulting the techs or editors.
Not knowing doesn't excuse the adwords team -- they should've consulted the Google.com team before they tried to "improve their rankings on Google." I just think it's more complicated than the idea of the borg-mentality: that all actions by different parts of the company were universally sanctioned by every employee of the company.
I've known several attorneys, and they all use WordPerfect -- their offices are also networked with Novell Netware. The reason is largely historical. Basically, all the major law firms were early adopters of personal computers. One of the early PC networking solutions was Netware and the most popular early word processor was WordPerfect. Even post-1995, a lot of these firms have stuck with this solution because their techs and staff are just more familiar with their tools. For a while I think Microsoft shipped Word with a "Word Perfect emulation mode" to try to lure away the lawfirms -- but it didn't take.
This type of practice is what's known as SLAPP: Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. They're used by companies as a way to silence critics. It basically works like this:
Company X does something bad
Citizen Group Y complains about it (in a newsletter, road sign, whatever)
Knowing that Citizen Group Y has limited funds and cannot afford a long, protracted legal battle, Company X files a lawsuit against Citizen Group Y, claiming they're disparaging their product or otherwise defaming their business (can you believe there's actual laws that serve as a basis for this crap? I mean, what the hell is "food disparagement" anyway?)
Citizen Group Y caves in, Company X resumes doing evil without tarnishing its good name
Fortunately, more and more states are getting wise and passing Anti-SLAPP laws, which gives legal grounds for requesting early dismissal of a SLAPP suit. Even though this might not keep you out of court, early dismissal can prevent protracted, expensive legal battles.
I don't know about everyone else here, but I didn't find anything deceptive about this at all. And I really enjoy the new policy.
First off, every news story I read or heard about the "no late fees" policy explained the caveat that it didn't mean you got to keep the movie forever, no strings attached. I guess I'm naturally distrustful too, so I even read the FAQ's about it on their website. They all said you got 1 week past your due date gratis. After that you automatically "bought" the movie, and it would be charged to the credit card on your account. If you returned the movie after that, the full charge would be refunded minus a restocking fee. This doesn't seem underhanded or tricky at all. In fact, it beats the hell out of Best Buy's "restocking fee" bullshit. I know I'm renting from Blockbuster, and keeping the movie forever is breaking that contract. Your movie is still due on the due date. Just because you don't have to pay a late fee for returning it late doesn't mean the movie doesn't have a due date any more.
Secondly, I know Blockbuster is a franchise system, so not every store is owned by the company. And every time I see an ad for them (or any other franchise system like McDonalds or Subway or something), they always feature the disclaimer "at participating locations." So I didn't assume that every store was going to follow through -- and sure enough, I heard news reports that some stores (to the dismay of the corporate parent) said they weren't going to participate. The stores near me all had big "The End of Late Fees" signs in the window, so that's how I knew they were participating.
Finally, I've been bitten by the late fees thing before. I know when I check out that the clerk always tells me when it's due ("Monday by noon" or whatever), and when I have the movie at home, I keep the receipt in the case as a reminder of when it's due -- so when I forget to return it, I know it's my fault for forgetting. Now I don't have to worry about forgetting occasionally. Recently, I rented a new release (2 day rental) and I only watched half the movie on the first night -- when the due date came and I forgot to return it, I could still watched the second half and return it the next day without paying a fee. To me, that's fantastic.
If Blockbuster hadn't posted a full terms and conditions or if they said something like "no strings attached", then, yes, I would say they were being deceptive. But they didn't do that. They listed their full T&C -- they even posted easy to read FAQ's on the details, and every PR interview or press release they put out disclosed the "automatic purchase" and "restocking fee" disclaimers.
IMHO, it's bullshit lawsuits like this that lead to crap laws like the one Congress just passed. There are people out there suffering real physical harm because corporations want to save $0.03 on a pool drain cover or hide the results of clinical tests that show their drugs are unsafe. There's factories out there that belch carcinogens into the air or drain PCBE's into the ground and some people get their panties in a knot over a $1.75 because they kept "Dodgeball" out for a month? If some little girl has her intestines ripped out by a pool drain, I want the motherfuckers to pay. But I could care less if some 30 year old guy thought he could keep his rentals forever because he was too lazy to read the fine print.
...according to the contest page, "this daemon character seems cute from somebody's point of view, but somebody may think which does not suit for the professional products to indicate that are using the FreeBSD inside."
And this somebody would be a dumbass. Seriously, Beastie has been around for almost 2 decades and has represented the "professional" side of BSD for all that time.
This is truly sad. I can just imagine the new logo being along the same lines as the crap parodied by eNormicom.
Since Unix has undergone decades of testing; code review and improvements; and security tuning, do you see Microsoft following Apple's lead and building the next generation of Windows as a GUI under a Unix kernel?
Here's why a lack of regulation for VoIP is A Bad Thing(TM). When you pick up a phone using POTS you always and immediately get a dial tone. If your phone service goes out for any reason, you can contact the Public Utility Commission and they will be on the phone company's ass right away. If your VoIP goes out, you have no recourse. Not to mention the fact ISP's do POP maintenance all the time -- I'm a little uncomfortable with knowing there's a time of day when I might not have phone service. When's the last time your phone company told you that phone service will be taken down between the hours of 11-12?
I'm not trying to impugn the technology -- I think VoIP is great, but if it's going to replace POTS, it needs oversight and regulation as a public service.
I don't own an mp3 player, nor do I have any plans on buying one, so I don't claim to know which is the "better device." But a quote in the NY Times basically summed up the whole situation:
"
Apple has the iPod. Everything else is just an mp3 player."
So the smaller jets aren't going away - it is the 747 that's leaving commerical passenger service.
Which is exactly why Boeing is developing the 7E7. The 7E7 is supposed to offer less seating capacity than the 747, and 777 (though pretty much the same as the smaller versions of the 757 and 767) but with tremendous fuel efficiency. Boeing is betting their future on the hope that airlines will want more flights with a smaller number of passengers. Airbus is betting the opposite -- they hope the airlines will want fewer flights with more passengers per flight.
It's funny. Here we are on a global computer network, built upon the application of principles of scientific theory that were once opposed by the church, and we're having the same argument people did 300 years ago.
Ahh, progress.
Funny story -- back when Ben Franklin invented lightning rods, the church decried them as heretical. That was until every building in town was safe from lightning strikes except the churches.:)
Microsoft's successor to Windows XP was originally promised to ship in 2004, though the company subsequently pushed the launch date to 3015 or something. Obviously, Microsoft won't be able to finish the code until it's had a peek at Apple's forthcoming Tiger.
Just get an X-10 firecracker set, download the BottleRocket X-10 linux controlling software, and write a cgi to run on your webserver that allows users to turn the lights on/off. Going through the whole hoax thing sounds like MORE work..
NO ONE FORCED YOU TO USE GPL'd CODE
on
Revising the GPL
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I love it when someone complains that the GPL "forced" them to open their source code. The GPL's not coming to your house, banging down your door and saying "OPEN SOURCE YOUR CODE!" The GPL simply says, you may NOT use GPL'd code in your code if your code is NOT GPL compatible.
You don't have to use a GPL'd spell checker in your word processor. Write your own friggin' spell checker! What's so viral about that?
Slashdot Mirror
Was this study done by domain resellers?
And the restocking fee for a rental is a lot less bullshit than the restocking fees at Best Buy for something I actually bought!
I LOVE the no late fees policy. I usually return my movies on time, but there's always that one time you forget to take it in on the way to work and you can only drop it off in the evening. Now I don't get bitten by the "hour-late" fee.
Is this a private school or a state school? The answer determines how much you have in the way of legal rights at the school.
A private school can ban free speech, force all their students to wear uniforms and only use their computer network for "sanctioned" purposes. If it's a state school, you might be able to spin a "free speech" angle out of this. Check with the EFF or local ACLU for help.
If it's a private school, sorry, you're SOL. You have no rights because you're using private property and are subject to the owner's rules.
I notice the story summary didn't have the "soul-sucking-registration" disclaimer. Is that kind of joking reserved only for the NYTimes.com site? At least NYTimes.com is still free (and you can always skip the registration by redirecting through Google). Also, I noticed no one here has posted the plain text of the article like they do for the NY Times stories. What gives?
- They're pissed off because they can't make a backup copy and there's no warranty on the original
- They're pissed because they can't resell their used copy if they don't want it any more
- They're pissed off because they used to be able to do these things and now it's being taken away from them
Don't get me wrong, I'm pro-copyright (although 90 years + the life of the artist is a little much). I agree that trading copyrighted anything online is illegal (movies, music, books, software, whatever). But that's not what DRM is about. DRM is about taking away the rights of the end-user -- by destroying the principle of first sale. DRM tells the end user, we think you're a thief, so we're going to protect you from yourself.I'm all for the RIAA lawsuits -- because that's how you protect copyright. I'm all for FSF lawsuits against GPL violators because that's how you protect copyright. If Red Hat DRM'd my Enterprise Linux CDs, I'd still look for a way to break the DRM and make a backup copy because I bought a usable copy of software.
Of course this is all academic, anyway. I've always said, "as long as something can be seen, heard or otherwise processed by humans, it can always be duplicated." New DRM schemes will be broken. The "Trusted Computing" machines will be cracked -- because necessity is the mother of invention.
You aren't obligated to respect the spirit of the law, just the letter of it. So, the ISPs will only have to do the bare minimum to comply. Screw the Google caches and the open relays. If the site doesn't appear on the list, they don't have to block it.
<Obligatory Futurama quote:>
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Well, in those days Mars was a dreary uninhabitable wasteland much like Utah, but unlike Utah Mars was eventually made livable.
</Obligatory Futurama quote:>
The NY Times had a great article yesterday on how the Bush administration is doing everything it can to manipulate the media and public opinion through carefully managed propogada campaigns. So color me surprised when the Justice Department can't find any abuses of the PATRIOT act that just happen to give the DOJ incredible Orwellian powers.
I guess that would be another thing I would add to my list:
Menu consistency. If someone running Windows has a question about Mozilla, I am 100% where all the config options are. Just today, someone accidently turned their image-blocking on for a certain url and asked me why they couldn't see images on a certain website. He was running Firefox, so I had to dig around in his menus a little bit before I could find the Image Manager.
Don't get me wrong, Firefox is great. I just like having the choice of using Mozilla. Sad to see it go. :( Hopefully it'll fork.
The Mozilla web page editor. I don't actually write web pages using it, but I do like to hit Ctrl-E every now and then to show coworkers the underlying table structure of a page. It's just a handy visual tool. Especially when I'm doing webdev.
The sidebars. I don't know about you, but I love custom sidebars. I have one for MapQuest, one for IMDb and one for Lorem Ipsum.
Edit->Preferences. The only reason Options is under Tools in Firefox is because it's trying to mimic IE. :)
Mozilla Tools:
Translate Page
Cookie Manager
Image Manager
Popup Manager
Form Manager
Password Manager
Download Manager
The File dialog. I'm sure the new open/save file dialog is easier for easily confused users, but I like having all the file managing options ready when the dialog first opens.
I guess you could call Mozilla the programmer's web browser. Feature rich and not ashamed of it.
The technical or editorial teams setup the rules of the game for how their site will behave and how users will interact with the site; and then the business or sales team makes some decision without consulting the techs or editors.
Not knowing doesn't excuse the adwords team -- they should've consulted the Google.com team before they tried to "improve their rankings on Google." I just think it's more complicated than the idea of the borg-mentality: that all actions by different parts of the company were universally sanctioned by every employee of the company.
I've known several attorneys, and they all use WordPerfect -- their offices are also networked with Novell Netware. The reason is largely historical. Basically, all the major law firms were early adopters of personal computers. One of the early PC networking solutions was Netware and the most popular early word processor was WordPerfect. Even post-1995, a lot of these firms have stuck with this solution because their techs and staff are just more familiar with their tools. For a while I think Microsoft shipped Word with a "Word Perfect emulation mode" to try to lure away the lawfirms -- but it didn't take.
- Company X does something bad
- Citizen Group Y complains about it (in a newsletter, road sign, whatever)
- Knowing that Citizen Group Y has limited funds and cannot afford a long, protracted legal battle, Company X files a lawsuit against Citizen Group Y, claiming they're disparaging their product or otherwise defaming their business (can you believe there's actual laws that serve as a basis for this crap? I mean, what the hell is "food disparagement" anyway?)
- Citizen Group Y caves in, Company X resumes doing evil without tarnishing its good name
Fortunately, more and more states are getting wise and passing Anti-SLAPP laws, which gives legal grounds for requesting early dismissal of a SLAPP suit. Even though this might not keep you out of court, early dismissal can prevent protracted, expensive legal battles.First off, every news story I read or heard about the "no late fees" policy explained the caveat that it didn't mean you got to keep the movie forever, no strings attached. I guess I'm naturally distrustful too, so I even read the FAQ's about it on their website. They all said you got 1 week past your due date gratis. After that you automatically "bought" the movie, and it would be charged to the credit card on your account. If you returned the movie after that, the full charge would be refunded minus a restocking fee. This doesn't seem underhanded or tricky at all. In fact, it beats the hell out of Best Buy's "restocking fee" bullshit. I know I'm renting from Blockbuster, and keeping the movie forever is breaking that contract. Your movie is still due on the due date. Just because you don't have to pay a late fee for returning it late doesn't mean the movie doesn't have a due date any more.
Secondly, I know Blockbuster is a franchise system, so not every store is owned by the company. And every time I see an ad for them (or any other franchise system like McDonalds or Subway or something), they always feature the disclaimer "at participating locations." So I didn't assume that every store was going to follow through -- and sure enough, I heard news reports that some stores (to the dismay of the corporate parent) said they weren't going to participate. The stores near me all had big "The End of Late Fees" signs in the window, so that's how I knew they were participating.
Finally, I've been bitten by the late fees thing before. I know when I check out that the clerk always tells me when it's due ("Monday by noon" or whatever), and when I have the movie at home, I keep the receipt in the case as a reminder of when it's due -- so when I forget to return it, I know it's my fault for forgetting. Now I don't have to worry about forgetting occasionally. Recently, I rented a new release (2 day rental) and I only watched half the movie on the first night -- when the due date came and I forgot to return it, I could still watched the second half and return it the next day without paying a fee. To me, that's fantastic.
If Blockbuster hadn't posted a full terms and conditions or if they said something like "no strings attached", then, yes, I would say they were being deceptive. But they didn't do that. They listed their full T&C -- they even posted easy to read FAQ's on the details, and every PR interview or press release they put out disclosed the "automatic purchase" and "restocking fee" disclaimers.
IMHO, it's bullshit lawsuits like this that lead to crap laws like the one Congress just passed. There are people out there suffering real physical harm because corporations want to save $0.03 on a pool drain cover or hide the results of clinical tests that show their drugs are unsafe. There's factories out there that belch carcinogens into the air or drain PCBE's into the ground and some people get their panties in a knot over a $1.75 because they kept "Dodgeball" out for a month? If some little girl has her intestines ripped out by a pool drain, I want the motherfuckers to pay. But I could care less if some 30 year old guy thought he could keep his rentals forever because he was too lazy to read the fine print.
This is truly sad. I can just imagine the new logo being along the same lines as the crap parodied by eNormicom.
Since Unix has undergone decades of testing; code review and improvements; and security tuning, do you see Microsoft following Apple's lead and building the next generation of Windows as a GUI under a Unix kernel?
I'm not trying to impugn the technology -- I think VoIP is great, but if it's going to replace POTS, it needs oversight and regulation as a public service.
It's funny. Here we are on a global computer network, built upon the application of principles of scientific theory that were once opposed by the church, and we're having the same argument people did 300 years ago.
:)
Ahh, progress.
Funny story -- back when Ben Franklin invented lightning rods, the church decried them as heretical. That was until every building in town was safe from lightning strikes except the churches.
Just get an X-10 firecracker set, download the BottleRocket X-10 linux controlling software, and write a cgi to run on your webserver that allows users to turn the lights on/off. Going through the whole hoax thing sounds like MORE work..
You don't have to use a GPL'd spell checker in your word processor. Write your own friggin' spell checker! What's so viral about that?
Now, in addition to Stallman calling it GNU/Linux, we'll have Mike Kelley calling it Palm/GNU/Linux.