I've had two speeding tickets in my driving career and, as a 21 year old guy am statistically fairly likely to speed. It'd be a little heavy-handed, but you could justify the pattern of behaviour if the police decided to follow me in unmarked cars to try and get me again.
No, I don't think it would be justified. Past behavior should not be justification to violate someone's right to privacy. IANAL, but I believe it's against the law to have someone followed/watched just because they've committed crimes in the past. You have to have reasonable suspicion they are planning or actively committing a crime (at least if your the police). Individuals or businesses are probably not held to this standard, but at the very least it's amoral business practice.
I also agree with the person who submitted this. If it was Microsoft who was found to be hiring private eyes to dig up dirt on other companies (something that they've probably done themselves), this room would be awash in anti-Microsoft napalm. I'm not trying to defend Microsoft for it's monopolistic practices here. But you have to admit it seems rather shady on Oracle's part, especially considering that some of this information was apparently used against Microsoft during the trial. Can you say, Conflict of Interest?
if I owned a t1 and I allowed other people to use it, I should have the right to determine what kinds of traffic I will deliver to my users
If said users are paying you for the right to use the T1, you don't have the right to determine what kind of traffic get's through. I suppose you do have the right to limit bandwidth, if a user is abusing bandwidth to the point of hurting other's access.
Welcome to the new millenium, where information packets and bandwidth are more important than real estate and precious metals.
An excellent idea. Links that open up new browser windows are my second most hated thing on the internet. The first, of course, being sites that "trap" you by continually re-directing you back to their page when you hit the back button. But I digress...
This kind of practice is only going to get worse before it get's better. It only a matter of time before non-porn sites get tired of people not clicking their banner ads, and decide to automatically load the banner-ad pages.
Well, that's kind of my point. If someone would have been able to grab Hotmail.com from Microsoft, how long do you think they would have kept it? About as long as it took Microsoft's lawyers to find a judge, I imagine.
It's disturbing considering that NSI doesn't exactly have a history of keeping their paperwork straight. How many times have they transferred someone's domain after simply recieving an e-mail from a hijacker? How long after this policy is implemented until someone forget's to mark my domain as paid after recieving my check, and my domain is auctioned off? How many notification e-mails will they forget to mail off?
On a side note: I fail to see how auctioning off a domain name will hurt anyone but individuals or small businesses. Do you actually think if some Big Company with a recognizable name would let their registration expire, and their domain was auctioned off, that whoever bought it would be allowed to keep it? No, said Big Company would simply sue the pants off of the buyer for "copyright infringement" or something.
Every time I see a story like this, I see a little bit more of the Internet slowly swallowed up by the machine that is Corporate America(World). PETA get's back peta.org. Coca-Cola shuts down some fan-site. Fox goes headhunting Simpson fan sites. I know that some of this is inevitable with the growth of the internet, but it's still disappointing to see coroporations take over another thing in this world.
heck I can even remember people buying a computer, and then returning it, saying it was broken. We would take it apart, and it would be missing the ram, the harddrive, etc. We could not "prove" that they stolen it, but it was obvious that they had. [We didn't have the resources.] We even went to setting up the machine and and running it first, in the store, just to cut down on the theft. it was insane.
Yeah, we used to see this all the time at the computer retailer I used to work at (cough..CompUSA..cough). It always amazed me at the gall of these people, what they thought they could get away with.
Customer: This computer I just bought doesn't work, I want a full refund. Me: Well, were you aware that it doesn't work because the RAM is missing? Customer (Oh shit look on their face): Huh, that's interesting. Guess it was bad from the factory, huh? Now, how about that refund. Me: Well, it's highly unlikely this computer would have come without any RAM at all. See without RAM, a computer doesn't boot, and since they test boot these things before they ship... Customer: Are you calling me a liar! Let me speak with your manager!
Sad this is, if they botherd to bitch to a manager enough, they usually got their way, and got at least a new machine. Meanwhile, the company has to go pay Compaq $350 for a 64 Meg DIMM, then turn around and sell the returned machine as a refurb for half the price of a new. I'm convinced that retail is hell for those computer people who were evil in their previous lives.
Granted, the extra used by this particular software title isn't much, especially when compared to the overall garbage generation of this country. One could make the argument that every little bit counts, or that not all recyclable material IS recycled, but that's not the point I was trying to make.
My point was that considering the contents of the package, there's absolutely no reason to make the box that big, aside from the fact that Microsoft wanted to spend some money to make sure that Street and Trips would be bigger and flashier than, say, Delorme Street Atlas. To me, this seems environmentally irresponsible.
On a side note: I originally submitted this article about a week-and-a-half ago. Is this the norm for Slashdot submissions? I'm not bitching or anything, just curious is it normally takes the "Herd of Attack Geese" that long to sift through all the submissions.
Agreed. Feature creep runs rampant in seemingly all major Office packages (anyone remember PerfectOffice from Novell?).
The problem, however, is that if the major players are all bloating up their code, what choice does the consumer have? No one is suprised when MSOffice demands 500+meg for an install, but when supposedly "alternative" office suites like StarOffice and Corel's WordPerfect office suite (can't remember the name off hand) start running up the useless feature count, the consumer loses a major reason for switching from MSOffice.
Still, here's hoping the MSOffice conversion in StarOffice 5.2 is up to snuff. I have to think that a good, stable, and compatible Office suite is one of the major hurdles keeping Linux off of a lot of desktops in the business world.
What goal do you want to achieve by granting property rights in information?
Ideally, you want to reward someone for creating a unique and useful piece of information, whether that be a song, software, book, etc. In our society, reward=monetary gain. It doesn't necessarily HAVE to be money, but remove money from the equation, and you remove a major incentive more most people to create the information.
Is the goal a worthy one? If so, is the granting of patents and copyrights the only way to achieve that goal? If not, what other means could we use to achieve it?
Protecting intellectual property is a worthy goal, IMHO, insomuch as it keeps those who create said information motivated to create more of it. As to whether patents and copyrights are the only way to achieve this goal, right now I think yes.
What other method would work? You could release music "shareware-style" (Here it is for free, if you like it pay me), but I don't think much money is going to be made doing that. You could release a part of the music (1 minute of a song, 2 songs off a CD), and offer the rest after they pay, but again, what happens when full copies start floating around in Warez sites? You could copy protect the music, have built-in encryption after 30 days, they have to pay to unlock, but copy protections are easy enough to crack, a lesson the software industry has already learned.
It seems to me that you are envisioning a future where all information (books, music, software, etc) is free, both in a philisophical and monetary sense. This idea works with software, where software creators can release their wares to the public, then make money on such things as training and support, since software is usually quite complicated. With music, however, there is no support: you get the song, you listen to it, you have a copy, the artist is now out of the loop. This would be fine if the artist is willing to give away his creation, or his work is subsidized in some other way. For those that want to make money, however, free music will drive them out of the music business.
You say that legally they DO have to pay, and I agree that's true. I just think that the laws are simply wrong. If I download music from the internet, it's not stealing, it's making a political statement. It's civil disobedience. It's a peaceful form of protest. Don't I have the right to protest?
Protesting what? The fact that CD's cost $15+? On the social scale of important things to protest, that ranks right around there with "The garbage man should collect on Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays".
We're not talking about being denied the right to vote, or racial discrimination here people. We're talking about the purchase/theft of a luxury item. You don't like the price of CD's? Don't buy them! Listen to the radio!
You would answer that no, I don't have the right to protest if by doing so I harm the creator of the music. My response would be that I haven't harmed the creator of the music. I have complimented him or her. I enjoyed their music. That doesn't mean I necessarily must pay for it.
Um, yes it does. By releasing music on a CD through a record company, an artist is saying, "Here are some songs I wrote and performed. They are the property of myself and my record company. If you wish to have a copy of this music, you must pay X amount of dollars for this tape/CD/record/MP3/etc." If you circumvent this in some way, well then you've broken copyright laws.
I see your point about not blindly following laws just because they are laws. It's this form of "moral lawlessness" that started America to begin with, and helped draw attention to the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movements. I do think, however, that your stretching it a bit to justify the theft of piece of entertainment media by calling it "protesting".
I'm interested to see how they'll make sure I'm Canadian through software.
I recently tried signing up for this service, despite the fact I'm American. I can tell you they're very serious about making sure only Canadians sign up. Here's how the signup process went.
Service: So, your Canadian, eh? Me: Uh, yeah, I am........eh! Service: OK, so we just have to verify that, you know. Question #1: What is the worst movie of all time? Me: Strange Brew. Service: Correct. Question #2: What's up with those Americans? Me: I don't know, they need to relax a little I suppose. Service: Right. OK, just one last question. Question #3: Who's the greates hockey player of all time? Me: Um, that would probably have to be Wayne Gretsky.....eh? Service:.....That all you got to say on the subject? Me: Uh, yeah, I guess. Service: You poser! A real Canadian would have argued the point for 2 hours solid!
Busted. So as you can see, their methods are totally full-proof. No American can talk about hockey for 2 hours straight.
...does the article's descriptions of "agents" sound eerily like the agents from the Matrix. Dammit, if I wake up tommorrow in some coccoon full of pink goo, I'm going to be heli-pissed!
7. I hear they had a lovely catered brunch before each day of shooting. 8. A generation from now, multitudes of excellent film directors will point to this movie as their "What not to do with a Hollywood movie" inspiration. 9. No CGI animators were harmed in the making of Battlefield Earth. 10. Suddenly makes "Independence Day" look pretty damn good.
I personally don't think that AOL/Warner had some big plan for the future of mp3s.
Yeah, kinda like Microsoft didn't have any big plans for operating systems back in the early 80's huh? AOL would like nothing better than to be able to push songs to you via myMP3.com, or similar service.
So now we are finally seeing true commercialization of MP3's. How long before Napster is bought out by one of the major record studios, and it's program changed to behave similar to myMP3.com?
Heathen! How dare you mock "Lemonade Stand", the greatest game of all time! Oh, the intrigue (How many lemons should I buy?); the excitement (How much money did I make today?); the pain (No more free sugar Mom?). Lemonade Stand had it all! I, personally, don't see what all the fuss about Diablo 2 is about, when clearly the sequal we are all waiting for is Lemonade Stand 2: Electric Boogaloo. It should be out any day now. Really;)
That's pretty cool that you'll go ahead and take a week off from telling everyone how cool linux is, how cool people who use linux are, and making money off of a lot of people who use linux - to play a fucking game that's only being released on windows/mac. I appreciate your support, Taco. Thanks, man.
Attention Blue Lang: this is internal support. We have detected a malfunction in your Humor Module: stand by for repairs.
We have also determined that you require updated versions of "Lighten the Hell Up" and "Don't be a Zealot". We recommend you download these into your Soul Kernel at your earliest convienience.
If the students responsible for that are not held to exactly the same standards then I, myself, despite the consequences will fly to Utah, walk into that school, and well... give everyone a big hug? subject them to a stern lecture? dance a little jig?
More like, Troll Slashdot with a purposely vague post that indicates I might be unstable enough to go to Utah and shoot up a school.
Linking to illegal sites is more than telling a person where to get crack. It's more like telling them where to get crack, then driving them to the front door of the crack-house, and giving them the code-word to make it easier to purchase the crack.
I agree that making linking illegal would set a dangerous precedent. But we also have to realize that the web IS a new medium, at least as far as the law is concerned. Like it or not, links to so-called "illegal sites"do make it easy for a surfers to find said sites. It's irresponsible for a web site to say, "Well, gee, here are all these illegal warez/MP3/whatever sites, but you really shouldn't go there with the intention of stealing someone's intellectual property. And if you do, well, we can't be held responsible".
I've been playing with StarOffice (both 5.1 and 5.2 preview) recently, and it looks to be a good, functional office suite, that converts Word and Excel documents fairly well (still some bugs here). Still, I think that Sun (or anyone else for that matter) has a long way to go before they can unseat Microsoft Office from the workplace.
Asking geeks and the computer savvy to switch office suites is no big deal. We've all had experience learning new software, and are not afraid to have our productivity suffer in the short term, if it means benefits in the long term. The real challenge will be getting everyone else (Mary in HR, Bob the CEO) convinced that switching office suites is a Good Thing.
Most users have a hard enough time switching between different versions of Office, let alone Office to StarOffice (or other). True, the up-and-coming office suites are designed to look and feel like Microsoft Office, but it's the little differences that matter. You can type a regular letter in anything without much trouble: but it's the way things like tables, columns, and other page setups are implemented that tend to confuse the common user. If your average user can't figure out how to perform their important tasks in a new office suite, they'll start crying for the old Office.
How many millions of dollars have been spent training the rank-and-file of businesses around the world to use Microsoft Office products? How many training classes have secretaries been sent to? How many Word for Dummy books placed on their desks? The point is that businesses have invested a lot of time and money to train their people to use Microsoft Office: the decision to switch shouldn't be taken lightly.
Don't the have these now? I seem to recall something on Discovery channel, talking about some research company using single-atom width knives (probably more like scalpels) to prepare really delicate samples for study. Of course, not exactly available on the Home Shopping Channel...
But how do you prove intent with virus spreading? If you sent a Melissa-like virus to one person, in theory it could then spread enough to become a major threat. When the authorities eventually find you, you could just say, "Hey, it was a personal project I was working on, I accidentally infected my own computer and sent e-mail before I realized I was infected".
Proving (in a court of law, at least) intent is hard enough in regular cases like murder or negligence. Unless there are some "smoking gun e-mails" (If you don't give me a million dollars, I'll infect your companies system!), it would be very difficult to prove intentional infection.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had two speeding tickets in my driving career and, as a 21 year old guy am statistically fairly likely to speed. It'd be a little heavy-handed, but you could justify the pattern of behaviour if the police decided to follow me in unmarked cars to try and get me again.
No, I don't think it would be justified. Past behavior should not be justification to violate someone's right to privacy. IANAL, but I believe it's against the law to have someone followed/watched just because they've committed crimes in the past. You have to have reasonable suspicion they are planning or actively committing a crime (at least if your the police). Individuals or businesses are probably not held to this standard, but at the very least it's amoral business practice.
I also agree with the person who submitted this. If it was Microsoft who was found to be hiring private eyes to dig up dirt on other companies (something that they've probably done themselves), this room would be awash in anti-Microsoft napalm. I'm not trying to defend Microsoft for it's monopolistic practices here. But you have to admit it seems rather shady on Oracle's part, especially considering that some of this information was apparently used against Microsoft during the trial. Can you say, Conflict of Interest?
Don't forget the requisite comments about more MP3 and p0rn storage...
if I owned a t1 and I allowed other people to use it, I should have the right to determine what kinds of traffic I will deliver to my users
If said users are paying you for the right to use the T1, you don't have the right to determine what kind of traffic get's through. I suppose you do have the right to limit bandwidth, if a user is abusing bandwidth to the point of hurting other's access.
Welcome to the new millenium, where information packets and bandwidth are more important than real estate and precious metals.
An excellent idea. Links that open up new browser windows are my second most hated thing on the internet. The first, of course, being sites that "trap" you by continually re-directing you back to their page when you hit the back button. But I digress...
This kind of practice is only going to get worse before it get's better. It only a matter of time before non-porn sites get tired of people not clicking their banner ads, and decide to automatically load the banner-ad pages.
Well, that's kind of my point. If someone would have been able to grab Hotmail.com from Microsoft, how long do you think they would have kept it? About as long as it took Microsoft's lawyers to find a judge, I imagine.
Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
It's disturbing considering that NSI doesn't exactly have a history of keeping their paperwork straight. How many times have they transferred someone's domain after simply recieving an e-mail from a hijacker? How long after this policy is implemented until someone forget's to mark my domain as paid after recieving my check, and my domain is auctioned off? How many notification e-mails will they forget to mail off?
On a side note: I fail to see how auctioning off a domain name will hurt anyone but individuals or small businesses. Do you actually think if some Big Company with a recognizable name would let their registration expire, and their domain was auctioned off, that whoever bought it would be allowed to keep it? No, said Big Company would simply sue the pants off of the buyer for "copyright infringement" or something.
Every time I see a story like this, I see a little bit more of the Internet slowly swallowed up by the machine that is Corporate America(World). PETA get's back peta.org. Coca-Cola shuts down some fan-site. Fox goes headhunting Simpson fan sites. I know that some of this is inevitable with the growth of the internet, but it's still disappointing to see coroporations take over another thing in this world.
Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
heck I can even remember people buying a computer, and then returning it, saying it was broken. We would take it apart, and it would be missing the ram, the harddrive, etc. We could not "prove" that they stolen it, but it was obvious that they had. [We didn't have the resources.] We even went to setting up the machine and and running it first, in the store, just to cut down on the theft. it was insane.
Yeah, we used to see this all the time at the computer retailer I used to work at (cough..CompUSA..cough). It always amazed me at the gall of these people, what they thought they could get away with.
Customer: This computer I just bought doesn't work, I want a full refund.
Me: Well, were you aware that it doesn't work because the RAM is missing?
Customer (Oh shit look on their face): Huh, that's interesting. Guess it was bad from the factory, huh? Now, how about that refund.
Me: Well, it's highly unlikely this computer would have come without any RAM at all. See without RAM, a computer doesn't boot, and since they test boot these things before they ship...
Customer: Are you calling me a liar! Let me speak with your manager!
Sad this is, if they botherd to bitch to a manager enough, they usually got their way, and got at least a new machine. Meanwhile, the company has to go pay Compaq $350 for a 64 Meg DIMM, then turn around and sell the returned machine as a refurb for half the price of a new. I'm convinced that retail is hell for those computer people who were evil in their previous lives.
Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Granted, the extra used by this particular software title isn't much, especially when compared to the overall garbage generation of this country. One could make the argument that every little bit counts, or that not all recyclable material IS recycled, but that's not the point I was trying to make.
My point was that considering the contents of the package, there's absolutely no reason to make the box that big, aside from the fact that Microsoft wanted to spend some money to make sure that Street and Trips would be bigger and flashier than, say, Delorme Street Atlas. To me, this seems environmentally irresponsible.
On a side note: I originally submitted this article about a week-and-a-half ago. Is this the norm for Slashdot submissions? I'm not bitching or anything, just curious is it normally takes the "Herd of Attack Geese" that long to sift through all the submissions.
Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Agreed. Feature creep runs rampant in seemingly all major Office packages (anyone remember PerfectOffice from Novell?).
The problem, however, is that if the major players are all bloating up their code, what choice does the consumer have? No one is suprised when MSOffice demands 500+meg for an install, but when supposedly "alternative" office suites like StarOffice and Corel's WordPerfect office suite (can't remember the name off hand) start running up the useless feature count, the consumer loses a major reason for switching from MSOffice.
Still, here's hoping the MSOffice conversion in StarOffice 5.2 is up to snuff. I have to think that a good, stable, and compatible Office suite is one of the major hurdles keeping Linux off of a lot of desktops in the business world.
Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
What goal do you want to achieve by granting property rights in information?
Ideally, you want to reward someone for creating a unique and useful piece of information, whether that be a song, software, book, etc. In our society, reward=monetary gain. It doesn't necessarily HAVE to be money, but remove money from the equation, and you remove a major incentive more most people to create the information.
Is the goal a worthy one?
If so, is the granting of patents and copyrights the only way to achieve that goal?
If not, what other means could we use to achieve it?
Protecting intellectual property is a worthy goal, IMHO, insomuch as it keeps those who create said information motivated to create more of it. As to whether patents and copyrights are the only way to achieve this goal, right now I think yes.
What other method would work? You could release music "shareware-style" (Here it is for free, if you like it pay me), but I don't think much money is going to be made doing that. You could release a part of the music (1 minute of a song, 2 songs off a CD), and offer the rest after they pay, but again, what happens when full copies start floating around in Warez sites? You could copy protect the music, have built-in encryption after 30 days, they have to pay to unlock, but copy protections are easy enough to crack, a lesson the software industry has already learned.
It seems to me that you are envisioning a future where all information (books, music, software, etc) is free, both in a philisophical and monetary sense. This idea works with software, where software creators can release their wares to the public, then make money on such things as training and support, since software is usually quite complicated. With music, however, there is no support: you get the song, you listen to it, you have a copy, the artist is now out of the loop. This would be fine if the artist is willing to give away his creation, or his work is subsidized in some other way. For those that want to make money, however, free music will drive them out of the music business.
Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
You say that legally they DO have to pay, and I agree that's true. I just think that the laws are simply wrong. If I download music from the internet, it's not stealing, it's making a political statement. It's civil disobedience. It's a peaceful form of protest. Don't I have the right to protest?
Protesting what? The fact that CD's cost $15+? On the social scale of important things to protest, that ranks right around there with "The garbage man should collect on Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays".
We're not talking about being denied the right to vote, or racial discrimination here people. We're talking about the purchase/theft of a luxury item. You don't like the price of CD's? Don't buy them! Listen to the radio!
You would answer that no, I don't have the right to protest if by doing so I harm the creator of the music. My response would be that I haven't harmed the creator of the music. I have complimented him or her. I enjoyed their music. That doesn't mean I necessarily must pay for it.
Um, yes it does. By releasing music on a CD through a record company, an artist is saying, "Here are some songs I wrote and performed. They are the property of myself and my record company. If you wish to have a copy of this music, you must pay X amount of dollars for this tape/CD/record/MP3/etc." If you circumvent this in some way, well then you've broken copyright laws.
I see your point about not blindly following laws just because they are laws. It's this form of "moral lawlessness" that started America to begin with, and helped draw attention to the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movements. I do think, however, that your stretching it a bit to justify the theft of piece of entertainment media by calling it "protesting".
Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
I'm interested to see how they'll make sure I'm Canadian through software.
:-)
I recently tried signing up for this service, despite the fact I'm American. I can tell you they're very serious about making sure only Canadians sign up. Here's how the signup process went.
Service: So, your Canadian, eh?
Me: Uh, yeah, I am........eh!
Service: OK, so we just have to verify that, you know. Question #1: What is the worst movie of all time?
Me: Strange Brew.
Service: Correct. Question #2: What's up with those Americans?
Me: I don't know, they need to relax a little I suppose.
Service: Right. OK, just one last question. Question #3: Who's the greates hockey player of all time?
Me: Um, that would probably have to be Wayne Gretsky.....eh?
Service:.....That all you got to say on the subject?
Me: Uh, yeah, I guess.
Service: You poser! A real Canadian would have argued the point for 2 hours solid!
Busted. So as you can see, their methods are totally full-proof. No American can talk about hockey for 2 hours straight.
What are some of the best pinball games you've all played? And just so this post has a point, I'll get the (silver)ball rolling:
Twilight Zone
Star Wars (the one with a big R2-D2 in the play field)
Adamns Family
Jurrasic Park
Others?...
...does the article's descriptions of "agents" sound eerily like the agents from the Matrix. Dammit, if I wake up tommorrow in some coccoon full of pink goo, I'm going to be heli-pissed!
Dude, no kidding. The damn box-art for Daikatana even has stuff like that on it.
"Daikatana is an immersive FPS set in an entirely 3d world." (Really? Wow, you paint such a vivid picture, it must be good).
"Daikatana is classic John Romero design." (As opposed to New Age John Romero design I suppose).
"Diakatana has many lines of code in it" (OK, I made that one up...)
Generally, a software company will at least have the decency to pay off some gaming mag, so they can print "The best Game of the Year" on their box.
7. I hear they had a lovely catered brunch before each day of shooting.
8. A generation from now, multitudes of excellent film directors will point to this movie as their "What not to do with a Hollywood movie" inspiration.
9. No CGI animators were harmed in the making of Battlefield Earth.
10. Suddenly makes "Independence Day" look pretty damn good.
I personally don't think that AOL/Warner had some big plan for the future of mp3s.
Yeah, kinda like Microsoft didn't have any big plans for operating systems back in the early 80's huh? AOL would like nothing better than to be able to push songs to you via myMP3.com, or similar service.
So now we are finally seeing true commercialization of MP3's. How long before Napster is bought out by one of the major record studios, and it's program changed to behave similar to myMP3.com?
Heathen! How dare you mock "Lemonade Stand", the greatest game of all time! Oh, the intrigue (How many lemons should I buy?); the excitement (How much money did I make today?); the pain (No more free sugar Mom?). Lemonade Stand had it all! I, personally, don't see what all the fuss about Diablo 2 is about, when clearly the sequal we are all waiting for is Lemonade Stand 2: Electric Boogaloo. It should be out any day now. Really ;)
That's pretty cool that you'll go ahead and take a week off from telling everyone how cool linux is, how cool people who use linux are, and making money off of a lot of people who use linux - to play a fucking game that's only being released on windows/mac. I appreciate your support, Taco. Thanks, man.
Attention Blue Lang: this is internal support. We have detected a malfunction in your Humor Module: stand by for repairs.
We have also determined that you require updated versions of "Lighten the Hell Up" and "Don't be a Zealot". We recommend you download these into your Soul Kernel at your earliest convienience.
If the students responsible for that are not held to exactly the same standards then I, myself, despite the consequences will fly to Utah, walk into that school, and well... give everyone a big hug? subject them to a stern lecture? dance a little jig?
More like, Troll Slashdot with a purposely vague post that indicates I might be unstable enough to go to Utah and shoot up a school.
Linking to illegal sites is more than telling a person where to get crack. It's more like telling them where to get crack, then driving them to the front door of the crack-house, and giving them the code-word to make it easier to purchase the crack.
I agree that making linking illegal would set a dangerous precedent. But we also have to realize that the web IS a new medium, at least as far as the law is concerned. Like it or not, links to so-called "illegal sites"do make it easy for a surfers to find said sites. It's irresponsible for a web site to say, "Well, gee, here are all these illegal warez/MP3/whatever sites, but you really shouldn't go there with the intention of stealing someone's intellectual property. And if you do, well, we can't be held responsible".
I've been playing with StarOffice (both 5.1 and 5.2 preview) recently, and it looks to be a good, functional office suite, that converts Word and Excel documents fairly well (still some bugs here). Still, I think that Sun (or anyone else for that matter) has a long way to go before they can unseat Microsoft Office from the workplace.
Asking geeks and the computer savvy to switch office suites is no big deal. We've all had experience learning new software, and are not afraid to have our productivity suffer in the short term, if it means benefits in the long term. The real challenge will be getting everyone else (Mary in HR, Bob the CEO) convinced that switching office suites is a Good Thing.
Most users have a hard enough time switching between different versions of Office, let alone Office to StarOffice (or other). True, the up-and-coming office suites are designed to look and feel like Microsoft Office, but it's the little differences that matter. You can type a regular letter in anything without much trouble: but it's the way things like tables, columns, and other page setups are implemented that tend to confuse the common user. If your average user can't figure out how to perform their important tasks in a new office suite, they'll start crying for the old Office.
How many millions of dollars have been spent training the rank-and-file of businesses around the world to use Microsoft Office products? How many training classes have secretaries been sent to? How many Word for Dummy books placed on their desks? The point is that businesses have invested a lot of time and money to train their people to use Microsoft Office: the decision to switch shouldn't be taken lightly.
7. "Natalie Portman has been dropped from Episode 2!" (nothing like teasing the trolls).
8. "Mac OS X screen shots!".
9. "Linus speaks out against breaking up Microsoft!"
10. "WebTV consoles can be hacked to run Linux!"
Don't the have these now? I seem to recall something on Discovery channel, talking about some research company using single-atom width knives (probably more like scalpels) to prepare really delicate samples for study. Of course, not exactly available on the Home Shopping Channel...
But how do you prove intent with virus spreading? If you sent a Melissa-like virus to one person, in theory it could then spread enough to become a major threat. When the authorities eventually find you, you could just say, "Hey, it was a personal project I was working on, I accidentally infected my own computer and sent e-mail before I realized I was infected".
Proving (in a court of law, at least) intent is hard enough in regular cases like murder or negligence. Unless there are some "smoking gun e-mails" (If you don't give me a million dollars, I'll infect your companies system!), it would be very difficult to prove intentional infection.