What you do is you cough up the dough. Trying to negotiate a deal by yourself with a bunch of lawyers is a guaranteed loss, unless you're a lawyer yourself (and the RIAA is unlikely to sue a lawyer with spare time...)
$3000 is right around the mimimum amount where it's worthwhile to get a lawyer involved. Less than that and it's cheaper to just pay.
There's also a problem with a class defense, as you have a mixture of people who shared a couple of songs and people who are trying to compete with Napster.
IANAL, either. If you get into this kind of mess, you need to talk to a real lawyer who knows intellectual property law.
If environmental restrictions were the reason new refineries aren't being built, they would be built in Mexico (remember NAFTA?) or even in the Middle East. We can import gasoline as easily as we import crude oil.
The reason for the current gas prices is simply that the oil companies know that they can sell just as much gas at $3/gallon as they sell at $1.50/gallon. Double profit, right there. (Inelastic demand, for you economics types.) Last number I saw (a while ago) said that Americans won't cut down on gasoline usage until the price hits at least $4/gallon.
And the probability of oil companies getting nailed for restraint-of-trade violations from the Bush administration is exactly zero.
Another huge advantage of a plugin architecture is that it forces the devalopers to define and use a strict API for the plugins. This forces them to keep things strictly modular.
In non-plugin systems, it's far too easy to add a feature by tweaking something down in the guts of the system. That's a recipe for a maintenence nightmare.
Let's see. Class III narcotics? Check. Stock market pump 'n dump? Check. Nigerian scams? Check. Hijacked machines? Check.
All of these are seriously illegal.
So where are the cops?
It'd be amusing (yes, I have a sick sense of humor) to find out that everybody in the chat room was a cop, just waiting for a real spammer to log in...
... is if an open source developer used a patented idea in a piece of sorfware. IBM or whoever is presumed to be familiar enough with their own patents to avoid doing this accidentally. If a develper came up with the idea independantly, it could get nasty if the patent holder was greedy. Wait until everybody's using it and then yank the chain.
As far as I'm concerned, independant development is prima facie proof that the idea was obvious, and therefore the patent is invalid. The Patent Office doesn't agree with me, however. More BMWs for lawyers.
Most personal snapshots are crap because the people who take them want them that way. They're personal mementos, not art objects. The traditional snapshot is as formalized as a Byzantine icon.
As a sometime professional photographer, I've given any number of hints similar to what I expect is on this list (love the/. effect) and then watched people turn around on the spot and shoot a crappy photo that looks just like every other crappy photo you've ever seen.
If people want good photos, all they have to do is look at their own photos as art and then work to make them look better.
Remember that Government rules make it impossible to make a profit -- unless *they* make changes to the spec. Conversely, you can take money home in barrels on change orders.
Fudging elections is not a new concept. This is just a new twist on it./tinfoil hat on
This is a very important point. While election fraud of various types has been around sa long as there have been elections, the computerized voting machines automate it.
You no longer have to steal votes one by one (or precinct by precinct), you just control the code in the voting machines and you can slant the election results however you want. And, unless you're really clumsy, there's no way the tampering can be detected.
Remember, the voting process has to be able to convince the sorest loser that the tally is correct. There's no way to do this unless the whole process is out in the open.
On far too many Open Source projects, it's a real struggle to figure out what the durn thing is supposed to do. Go to the website, get a list of contributers, a changelog, and perhaps some press releases. Fire it up, click "help->about" and get a logo. Nothing says what it does.
Historically, there have been a number of reasons that Linux hasn't been very useful as a desktop, and even less as a home machine:
Hard to set up and configure. At best, 'way too many options. Software installation is a mess.
No usable office applications (word processors, spreadsheet, etc.).
GUI was slow, ugly, inconsistant, and unreliable.
Problematic hardware support. Took forever to get decent USB support, for example.
Not tolerant of a changing environment. Modems were a total disaster and LANs weren't much better.
All of these have pretty much been solved, except for the first and last. While those haven't been solved, they've gotten a heck of a lot better.
Overall, the Linux desktop has gotten to the point where it really is a worthy competitor for Microsoft. This time last year, it wasn't. This time next year, it's Microsoft who will be playing catchup.
Some things I'd like to see investigated (I wouldn't expect straight answers to these questions):
1. The usual reason given for outsourcing is that it's cheaper. What about other reasons? Freedom from Government regulation? Freedom from stockholder/top management oversight? Financial shennagians?
2. In the manufacturing world, we've seen outsourcing start with assembly-line work and end up with essentially the entire operation overseas. (Think of home entertainment.) How high up the corporate ladder will the current outsourcing trend go? Could you, for example, run an entire bank branch (not just tellers) from India? Newspaper back office? Stock brokerage? Law office?
3. What is happening to the Indian outsourcing firms as even cheaper countries (Russia, Ukraine) get into the act?
4. Freedom from Government interference is one advantage given for outsourcing. What about the downside? Organized crime? Political corruption/extortion? (How do you *know* that your shiny new system doesn't have a backdoor, now that you've fired all the engineers?)
1. It's a "visual" system. There seem to be more and more programmers who seem to be textually challenged. A class name by itself is incomprehensible; the same class name with a little box around it is somehow better. UML, being a visual system, plays straight into this. Note that the developers of UML sell UML software; they'd be out of work if all you needed to use it was a text editor.
2. (more relevant to the parent post) In the Ivory Tower section of Software Engineering, the Software Architect/System Designer is the only "real" professional. Programmers are like bricklayers; they do exactly what they're told with standard tools and components. With the proper Design, a trained monkey can produce perfectly good code. (I obviously agree with the parent post -- if it's mechanical, write a program to do it.) UML plays into this -- "we have a really good UML model -- if it doesn't work perfectly, it's because the programmers didn't follow our design closely enough".
With all that said, UML is a perfectly good tool -- as long as everybody knows that's all it is (that's the point of the original article.)
I see it a bit differently. Microsoft (and other software vendors) are desperate to maintain the fiction that shrinkwrap/clickthru EULAs actaully mean anything (they viiolate just about every common law principal of business agreements).
By getting people to agree that they *need* to worry about the transfer of license when a PC is sold, they reinforce the idea that the EULA actually means something.
It's a lot better on the ol' PR than suing an orphanage somewhere over EULA viiolations.
Slashdot Mirror
What you do is you cough up the dough. Trying to negotiate a deal by yourself with a bunch of lawyers is a guaranteed loss, unless you're a lawyer yourself (and the RIAA is unlikely to sue a lawyer with spare time ...)
$3000 is right around the mimimum amount where it's worthwhile to get a lawyer involved. Less than that and it's cheaper to just pay.
There's also a problem with a class defense, as you have a mixture of people who shared a couple of songs and people who are trying to compete with Napster.
IANAL, either. If you get into this kind of mess, you need to talk to a real lawyer who knows intellectual property law.
No.
If environmental restrictions were the reason new refineries aren't being built, they would be built in Mexico (remember NAFTA?) or even in the Middle East. We can import gasoline as easily as we import crude oil.
The reason for the current gas prices is simply that the oil companies know that they can sell just as much gas at $3/gallon as they sell at $1.50/gallon. Double profit, right there. (Inelastic demand, for you economics types.) Last number I saw (a while ago) said that Americans won't cut down on gasoline usage until the price hits at least $4/gallon.
And the probability of oil companies getting nailed for restraint-of-trade violations from the Bush administration is exactly zero.
Yuppers.
For a long time now, spam has looked less like marketing and more like a denial of service attack.
The Feds claim to be concerned with "cyberterrorism". It's happening and it's right under their noses.
Another huge advantage of a plugin architecture is that it forces the devalopers to define and use a strict API for the plugins. This forces them to keep things strictly modular.
In non-plugin systems, it's far too easy to add a feature by tweaking something down in the guts of the system. That's a recipe for a maintenence nightmare.
So send them $30 worth of documents. Last time I looked, lawyers charge $2/page for copying.
They want more docs, send more money.
Uhh, make that SVG paper. This is the FSF we're talking about, after all.
... is where they spell your name right."
-- old showbiz saying
Uhh, dude? The pros test their code before it goes live.
Probability of this being an accident is zilch.
Let's see. Class III narcotics? Check. Stock market pump 'n dump? Check. Nigerian scams? Check. Hijacked machines? Check.
...
All of these are seriously illegal.
So where are the cops?
It'd be amusing (yes, I have a sick sense of humor) to find out that everybody in the chat room was a cop, just waiting for a real spammer to log in
... is if an open source developer used a patented idea in a piece of sorfware. IBM or whoever is presumed to be familiar enough with their own patents to avoid doing this accidentally. If a develper came up with the idea independantly, it could get nasty if the patent holder was greedy. Wait until everybody's using it and then yank the chain.
As far as I'm concerned, independant development is prima facie proof that the idea was obvious, and therefore the patent is invalid. The Patent Office doesn't agree with me, however. More BMWs for lawyers.
I have it on the best of authority that the ID systems have the biometrics of all known successful suicide bombers.
Thanks a bunch, guys.
Most personal snapshots are crap because the people who take them want them that way. They're personal mementos, not art objects. The traditional snapshot is as formalized as a Byzantine icon.
/. effect) and then watched people turn around on the spot and shoot a crappy photo that looks just like every other crappy photo you've ever seen.
As a sometime professional photographer, I've given any number of hints similar to what I expect is on this list (love the
If people want good photos, all they have to do is look at their own photos as art and then work to make them look better.
Just the thing for your new linux-based pocket switching network!
Maryland legislators make $37500/year. Next question?
Yup. Been on both sides of the table on this one.
Remember that Government rules make it impossible to make a profit -- unless *they* make changes to the spec. Conversely, you can take money home in barrels on change orders.
Fudging elections is not a new concept. This is just a new twist on it. /tinfoil hat on
This is a very important point. While election fraud of various types has been around sa long as there have been elections, the computerized voting machines automate it.
You no longer have to steal votes one by one (or precinct by precinct), you just control the code in the voting machines and you can slant the election results however you want. And, unless you're really clumsy, there's no way the tampering can be detected.
Remember, the voting process has to be able to convince the sorest loser that the tally is correct. There's no way to do this unless the whole process is out in the open.
I'll second that.
On far too many Open Source projects, it's a real struggle to figure out what the durn thing is supposed to do. Go to the website, get a list of contributers, a changelog, and perhaps some press releases. Fire it up, click "help->about" and get a logo. Nothing says what it does.
WHAT THE BLEEP IS IT SUPPOSED TO DO?
[snicker]
...
Like any other package manager, Portage works wonderfully when it works. When it doesn't work, well
Try "emerge subversion".
Historically, there have been a number of reasons that Linux hasn't been very useful as a desktop, and even less as a home machine:
All of these have pretty much been solved, except for the first and last. While those haven't been solved, they've gotten a heck of a lot better.
Overall, the Linux desktop has gotten to the point where it really is a worthy competitor for Microsoft. This time last year, it wasn't. This time next year, it's Microsoft who will be playing catchup.
I've never seen sexually explicit SPAM*. Sexually explicit spam? Sure.
"SPAM" is a tasty processed-meat product composed of cholesterol, saturated fat, salt, and water (read the label). Spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail.
So when an e-mail says "This message is not SPAM", it it technically correct.
* Insert crude remark here about "porking".
Some things I'd like to see investigated (I wouldn't expect straight answers to these questions):
1. The usual reason given for outsourcing is that it's cheaper. What about other reasons? Freedom from Government regulation? Freedom from stockholder/top management oversight? Financial shennagians?
2. In the manufacturing world, we've seen outsourcing start with assembly-line work and end up with essentially the entire operation overseas. (Think of home entertainment.) How high up the corporate ladder will the current outsourcing trend go? Could you, for example, run an entire bank branch (not just tellers) from India? Newspaper back office? Stock brokerage? Law office?
3. What is happening to the Indian outsourcing firms as even cheaper countries (Russia, Ukraine) get into the act?
4. Freedom from Government interference is one advantage given for outsourcing. What about the downside? Organized crime? Political corruption/extortion? (How do you *know* that your shiny new system doesn't have a backdoor, now that you've fired all the engineers?)
ROFL!
Anyway, a couple more "gotchas" with UML:
1. It's a "visual" system. There seem to be more and more programmers who seem to be textually challenged. A class name by itself is incomprehensible; the same class name with a little box around it is somehow better. UML, being a visual system, plays straight into this. Note that the developers of UML sell UML software; they'd be out of work if all you needed to use it was a text editor.
2. (more relevant to the parent post) In the Ivory Tower section of Software Engineering, the Software Architect/System Designer is the only "real" professional. Programmers are like bricklayers; they do exactly what they're told with standard tools and components. With the proper Design, a trained monkey can produce perfectly good code. (I obviously agree with the parent post -- if it's mechanical, write a program to do it.) UML plays into this -- "we have a really good UML model -- if it doesn't work perfectly, it's because the programmers didn't follow our design closely enough".
With all that said, UML is a perfectly good tool -- as long as everybody knows that's all it is (that's the point of the original article.)
I see it a bit differently. Microsoft (and other software vendors) are desperate to maintain the fiction that shrinkwrap/clickthru EULAs actaully mean anything (they viiolate just about every common law principal of business agreements).
By getting people to agree that they *need* to worry about the transfer of license when a PC is sold, they reinforce the idea that the EULA actually means something.
It's a lot better on the ol' PR than suing an orphanage somewhere over EULA viiolations.
Remake of Hardware Wars.
They've eliminated all those annoying mid-bass, midrange, and high notes.
Nobody cares about anything but bass, the lower and louder the better.
That's music!