That Linux is out of touch with the average user is, IMHO, a GOOD thing. I don't want to be using a system that is tailored for the average user. Those are the same people that screwed up the internet. Why let them screw up yet another OS?
Thanks for updating the facts on this. I didn't know Theo was the party involved. Now that makes sense. And of course he doesn't want OpenBSD to end up being GPL. Microsoft might have the same issue if they didn't already have their own means to get the technical details:-)
This little incident is proof that in so many businesses (e.g. big corporations), the ultimate decision making authorities do not use valid reasons for things like which product to purchase.
While one developer of a competing open source operating system has criticized the NDA approach, developers are free under the GPL to use the Linux driver as the documentation for a new one as long as they don't copy the actual code. "The drivers are generally better written than the specs," Kroah-Hartman says.
What? If the driver code is GPL, why can't I copy it?
I suspect he means "copy" as in "make a derived work" that would have chunks of code taken from the original. But still, this is what GPL is about... being able to take an existing source and make a derived work from it (that presumably would be better), and redistribute that derived work also under GPL (so someone else can derive from that later on... and on... and on).
I agree with you, it is not racketeering. What about libel? Sure, it is not a statement against a person. But could MSFT be sued (perhaps by FSF) for libel, and claim in the suit that the statement (such as the one of 42 violations in the kernel) is false, to trigger discovery or other processes to find out just what they think is a violation (if in fact they even think that)?
Still, a weak argument could be constructed that Microsoft does not have a basis for such a lawsuit, either because of failure to enforce what they knew about, or because they just didn't have a case to begin with, and that a lawsuit in such a case would in fact be illegal (and they know it), and this could possibly make it fit the definition of racketeering.
YOU also need to take this case in context. For many other cases, what you say makes sense. For this one, not so much. To start with, what he is "revealing" is already well known. So it could well be argued that the company is specifically targeting him just because he happens to like their music.
But the really big issue here is that so many companies are just so utterly clueless about several things. They are clueless about technology. They are clueless about security. They are clueless about the internet. They are clueless about making workable business models. And a substantial subset of them are clueless about law (including, possibly, this company, depending on the outcome of them consulting a clueful lawyer, if they are smart enough to seek out one).
Once information is out on the net, the genie is out of the bottle forever. There is no putting it back. It cannot be removed, regardless of whether it was right or wrong to have been released. Any subsequent re-releases of the same information are irrelevant, so asking someone to stop means nothing. And threatening a lawsuit, especially an international one, is just going to make the information spread faster, not slower. Any lawyer that doesn't understand that (and unfortunately there are still way too many of them) is in the clueless category.
Of course a lawsuit threat does need to be taken seriously no matter the situation. But, IMHO, any threat, as well as any actual suit even if out of jurisdiction, always deserves to be be published. The reason for this is that the world needs to always know about these things so they can decide of the threat/suit is justified, or if the legal system is being abused.
It depends on the efficiency of those processes. If you can get a very large percentage of energy out of Al+O as you had to put into Al-O, then you could make a great energy conversion/storage system. But we also have to factor in things like weight and volume of storage. Is it practical to carry around that much Aluminum ready to be oxidized?
What matters is the incremental processes. If they can come up with a process that converts the residual aluminum oxide back to aluminum (this is the energy input step) while not affecting the gallium that is also present, then we might have a workable system. The efficiency will, of course, matter. If they could make this re-cycling step work from concentrated direct sunlight, that would be even better. So that's the next development phase we need. The initial acquisition of the aluminum won't be as important if we have a cheap efficient way to recycle it in this system.
Keep in mind that any energy system has to have an energy input somewhere and somewhen. A system that lets us recharge quickly is great. Even better if it doesn't lose any of the material used (especially if that material would be toxic or otherwise harmful).
Fossil fuels are the least efficient if you factor in the time it takes to charge them up with energy.
We can just blame this on sysadmins that don't want to work at underpaying jobs with bad managers that don't give any respect and corporate executives that don't really give a damn about quality of service.
SDI would be great for us. But that still leaves those who are wanting to run video from their DR(ain ba)M(aged) HD-DVD players to their DR(ain ba)M(aged) HD display monitors having to use one of the stupidest designs ever (aside from the DRM itself). The content industry simply won't go for it unless it supports DRM.
The very concept of SDI doesn't preclude using DRM. Just crank up the bit rate a it, encrypt the content, and include a few places in the format timing for the DRM exchange. So it could be done.
BTW, SDI is not a perfect design. While is certainly gains from simplicity and ease of use, a few tweaks to the design could make it a lot better. For one thing, the bit level modulation coding needs to change. SDI currently suffers from the possibility of losing serialization sync when there are long runs of specific bit patterns. Although SDI does include a non-crypto type scrambler to avoid certain common signal values affecting this, it cannot entirely eliminate it. A certain pinkish color for standard definition video is known to trigger these issues. But this is so easily fixable for any new re-design being done by using a group coding that entirely prevents long runs of 0's or 1's. Consult with me if you want a coding system designed for it.
Yes it does. It's called refractive index. And it can be more severe in fiber than in metallic.
Impedance or refractive index is an issue at junction points where there could be a sudden change in that impedance or refractive index, with also a sudden change back to the original impedance or refractive index. This can cause reflections resulting in signal loss and distortion.
But despite that, I do agree that fiber is overall the better choice, although I could live well with a single coax rated to 6 GHz with SMA connectors. The DVI and HDMI connectors and cable bundles are absolutely nuts.
However, it would still be better for the law to be changed to allow the independent translations if the original content is released without a translation in the given language. In effect the law would be saying to the legal content distributors "translate it into our language, too... or be screwed in our language".
Sheesh! I know these steps and I don't even use Windows (I prefer Linux, usually text console command line).
They will never be able to understand how to follow your steps. You'd have to show them how to do this in terms of pull down menus and mouse clicks, with full illustrations of every step. I bet some of them haven't even taken the coffee shield off their keyboard by half way through the day. They only understand mouse and graphics.
I have an old Sun Sparc 5/70 that still works. Rock solid machine and has OpenBSD loaded on it. I even have a static IP address on my dialup service I could put it on.
And using "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" as a snippet from an article on how to make a content restriction system that fails would be fair use, too, right?
I bought a 500GB drive three weeks ago on a Friday evening. It took me almost all weekend to fill it up. And that was after I reformatted it to a Linux filesystem.
This vote is good for Microsoft. It can work this way. With ODF on the list, and later with others like PDF on the list, plus their own OOXML added to the list, it can make the list itself look legitimate. Then they will argue that governments can meet their obligations for open documents by choosing any one format from the list, making it seem that OOXML will be at least as good a choice as ODF.
Because the law requires the university to provide the counternotice to the sender of the DMCA notification.
These accusations are coming in without any personal identification. It is the university that has to convert information like which IP address was used at what time into a student identification. If the student claims the university made an error in that step, that issue needs to be resolved BEFORE any violation of privacy is performed. If there really was a mistake, and they divulged the wrong identification to the **AA, and especially if this caused further harm to the wrong person, the university is very seriously on the hook here, ceratinly civilly, and I sure hope criminally as well. So if there is such a counterclaim by a student saying something like "It could not be me on that IP at that time as I have proof I was in <some other location> with my computer", then the university had better not be sending that (quite possibly wrong) name to the **AA until the matter is resolved.
It doesn't cost anything, but among the things it must contain is your contact info as well as:
"(C) A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
But if the university is told it has made a mistake, but goes ahead and provides the wrong contact information to the **AA, who is committing the real crime here?
Abolishing patents may well be a simple solution, and certainly much better than we have today overall. But there are a few things we will lose out on without a patent system. And there will be plenty of people wanting to keep the system for various reasons, to some degree. I think the compromise at only patenting true genuine innovations that a large panel of experts agree is something we would not have gotten (within the term of the patent) had this applicant not invented it, is what we will get the most benefit from. I'm also suggesting variable length patents where if the panel believes the invention is X years ahead of when it would have ordinarily been created, it gets a patent for X years.
People like bank tellers and officers have been fingerprinted for decades. Once it became clear that programmers could divert money through the computers, they started fingerprinting them as well. A friend of mine told me about being fingerprinted for his bank job as a computer operator (never touched money). And that was in 1977.
So what happens, under either the old policy or the new policy, if the student certifies that the offending material does not actually exist (they were misidentified), is not actually online (they have it legally, but someone just broke in and saw it there), is their own genuine work they created, or that the complainant is not the actual owner?
And why does an innocent victim have to give up their privacy just to assert their innocence? If they make a claim to the university and the university can see that the claim is correct, then why would the university still want to cause them harm by way of privacy invasion?
No student ever contested a notice? How much does it cost to do that?
As much as I hate it, zappepcs is exactly right on this. Management will not adjust itself to your terms. You need to adjust to their terms and concepts, or find new management (e.g. change jobs... yeah, there are vast differences in managers).
Things to especially keep in mind include: 1: Express the issue in business terms, including short and long term costs, impact on revenues and sales, legal liabilities, and a thorough risk analysis (risks not only of a paradigm shift in technology, but also a shift in markets, staffing, etc).... and 2: Give managers choices, but not too many. Two choices can usually work. Three or Four choices is better, even if one or two are obviously bad choices. More than that is probaby too many (depending on the complexity of the issue).
Put it in writing. Summarize entirely in not more than one page, better if it is one or two paragraphs. The whole report shouldn't be more than 2 to 6 pages, shorter is better. Then just say the full details can be made available if needed (they usually don't want it, but some will). And include your recommendation and why in one paragraph. The higher level the manager is, the shorter all this usually needs to be.
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That Linux is out of touch with the average user is, IMHO, a GOOD thing. I don't want to be using a system that is tailored for the average user. Those are the same people that screwed up the internet. Why let them screw up yet another OS?
Thanks for updating the facts on this. I didn't know Theo was the party involved. Now that makes sense. And of course he doesn't want OpenBSD to end up being GPL. Microsoft might have the same issue if they didn't already have their own means to get the technical details :-)
This little incident is proof that in so many businesses (e.g. big corporations), the ultimate decision making authorities do not use valid reasons for things like which product to purchase.
From TFA:
What? If the driver code is GPL, why can't I copy it?
I suspect he means "copy" as in "make a derived work" that would have chunks of code taken from the original. But still, this is what GPL is about ... being able to take an existing source and make a derived work from it (that presumably would be better), and redistribute that derived work also under GPL (so someone else can derive from that later on ... and on ... and on).
I agree with you, it is not racketeering. What about libel? Sure, it is not a statement against a person. But could MSFT be sued (perhaps by FSF) for libel, and claim in the suit that the statement (such as the one of 42 violations in the kernel) is false, to trigger discovery or other processes to find out just what they think is a violation (if in fact they even think that)?
Still, a weak argument could be constructed that Microsoft does not have a basis for such a lawsuit, either because of failure to enforce what they knew about, or because they just didn't have a case to begin with, and that a lawsuit in such a case would in fact be illegal (and they know it), and this could possibly make it fit the definition of racketeering.
It's an illegal anti-DRM device outlawed by the DMCA. If you ever see one, be sure to stay far far away.
YOU also need to take this case in context. For many other cases, what you say makes sense. For this one, not so much. To start with, what he is "revealing" is already well known. So it could well be argued that the company is specifically targeting him just because he happens to like their music.
But the really big issue here is that so many companies are just so utterly clueless about several things. They are clueless about technology. They are clueless about security. They are clueless about the internet. They are clueless about making workable business models. And a substantial subset of them are clueless about law (including, possibly, this company, depending on the outcome of them consulting a clueful lawyer, if they are smart enough to seek out one).
Once information is out on the net, the genie is out of the bottle forever. There is no putting it back. It cannot be removed, regardless of whether it was right or wrong to have been released. Any subsequent re-releases of the same information are irrelevant, so asking someone to stop means nothing. And threatening a lawsuit, especially an international one, is just going to make the information spread faster, not slower. Any lawyer that doesn't understand that (and unfortunately there are still way too many of them) is in the clueless category.
Of course a lawsuit threat does need to be taken seriously no matter the situation. But, IMHO, any threat, as well as any actual suit even if out of jurisdiction, always deserves to be be published. The reason for this is that the world needs to always know about these things so they can decide of the threat/suit is justified, or if the legal system is being abused.
It depends on the efficiency of those processes. If you can get a very large percentage of energy out of Al+O as you had to put into Al-O, then you could make a great energy conversion/storage system. But we also have to factor in things like weight and volume of storage. Is it practical to carry around that much Aluminum ready to be oxidized?
What matters is the incremental processes. If they can come up with a process that converts the residual aluminum oxide back to aluminum (this is the energy input step) while not affecting the gallium that is also present, then we might have a workable system. The efficiency will, of course, matter. If they could make this re-cycling step work from concentrated direct sunlight, that would be even better. So that's the next development phase we need. The initial acquisition of the aluminum won't be as important if we have a cheap efficient way to recycle it in this system.
Keep in mind that any energy system has to have an energy input somewhere and somewhen. A system that lets us recharge quickly is great. Even better if it doesn't lose any of the material used (especially if that material would be toxic or otherwise harmful).
Fossil fuels are the least efficient if you factor in the time it takes to charge them up with energy.
We can just blame this on sysadmins that don't want to work at underpaying jobs with bad managers that don't give any respect and corporate executives that don't really give a damn about quality of service.
SDI would be great for us. But that still leaves those who are wanting to run video from their DR(ain ba)M(aged) HD-DVD players to their DR(ain ba)M(aged) HD display monitors having to use one of the stupidest designs ever (aside from the DRM itself). The content industry simply won't go for it unless it supports DRM.
The very concept of SDI doesn't preclude using DRM. Just crank up the bit rate a it, encrypt the content, and include a few places in the format timing for the DRM exchange. So it could be done.
BTW, SDI is not a perfect design. While is certainly gains from simplicity and ease of use, a few tweaks to the design could make it a lot better. For one thing, the bit level modulation coding needs to change. SDI currently suffers from the possibility of losing serialization sync when there are long runs of specific bit patterns. Although SDI does include a non-crypto type scrambler to avoid certain common signal values affecting this, it cannot entirely eliminate it. A certain pinkish color for standard definition video is known to trigger these issues. But this is so easily fixable for any new re-design being done by using a group coding that entirely prevents long runs of 0's or 1's. Consult with me if you want a coding system designed for it.
Yes it does. It's called refractive index. And it can be more severe in fiber than in metallic.
Impedance or refractive index is an issue at junction points where there could be a sudden change in that impedance or refractive index, with also a sudden change back to the original impedance or refractive index. This can cause reflections resulting in signal loss and distortion.
But despite that, I do agree that fiber is overall the better choice, although I could live well with a single coax rated to 6 GHz with SMA connectors. The DVI and HDMI connectors and cable bundles are absolutely nuts.
However, it would still be better for the law to be changed to allow the independent translations if the original content is released without a translation in the given language. In effect the law would be saying to the legal content distributors "translate it into our language, too ... or be screwed in our language".
Apparently the people who prepared this document didn't graduate to the "Advanced Word for Dummies" course :-)
Sheesh! I know these steps and I don't even use Windows (I prefer Linux, usually text console command line).
They will never be able to understand how to follow your steps. You'd have to show them how to do this in terms of pull down menus and mouse clicks, with full illustrations of every step. I bet some of them haven't even taken the coffee shield off their keyboard by half way through the day. They only understand mouse and graphics.
I have an old Sun Sparc 5/70 that still works. Rock solid machine and has OpenBSD loaded on it. I even have a static IP address on my dialup service I could put it on.
And using "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" as a snippet from an article on how to make a content restriction system that fails would be fair use, too, right?
I bought a 500GB drive three weeks ago on a Friday evening. It took me almost all weekend to fill it up. And that was after I reformatted it to a Linux filesystem.
This vote is good for Microsoft. It can work this way. With ODF on the list, and later with others like PDF on the list, plus their own OOXML added to the list, it can make the list itself look legitimate. Then they will argue that governments can meet their obligations for open documents by choosing any one format from the list, making it seem that OOXML will be at least as good a choice as ODF.
These accusations are coming in without any personal identification. It is the university that has to convert information like which IP address was used at what time into a student identification. If the student claims the university made an error in that step, that issue needs to be resolved BEFORE any violation of privacy is performed. If there really was a mistake, and they divulged the wrong identification to the **AA, and especially if this caused further harm to the wrong person, the university is very seriously on the hook here, ceratinly civilly, and I sure hope criminally as well. So if there is such a counterclaim by a student saying something like "It could not be me on that IP at that time as I have proof I was in <some other location> with my computer", then the university had better not be sending that (quite possibly wrong) name to the **AA until the matter is resolved.
It doesn't cost anything, but among the things it must contain is your contact info as well as:"(C) A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
But if the university is told it has made a mistake, but goes ahead and provides the wrong contact information to the **AA, who is committing the real crime here?
Abolishing patents may well be a simple solution, and certainly much better than we have today overall. But there are a few things we will lose out on without a patent system. And there will be plenty of people wanting to keep the system for various reasons, to some degree. I think the compromise at only patenting true genuine innovations that a large panel of experts agree is something we would not have gotten (within the term of the patent) had this applicant not invented it, is what we will get the most benefit from. I'm also suggesting variable length patents where if the panel believes the invention is X years ahead of when it would have ordinarily been created, it gets a patent for X years.
People like bank tellers and officers have been fingerprinted for decades. Once it became clear that programmers could divert money through the computers, they started fingerprinting them as well. A friend of mine told me about being fingerprinted for his bank job as a computer operator (never touched money). And that was in 1977.
So what happens, under either the old policy or the new policy, if the student certifies that the offending material does not actually exist (they were misidentified), is not actually online (they have it legally, but someone just broke in and saw it there), is their own genuine work they created, or that the complainant is not the actual owner?
And why does an innocent victim have to give up their privacy just to assert their innocence? If they make a claim to the university and the university can see that the claim is correct, then why would the university still want to cause them harm by way of privacy invasion?
No student ever contested a notice? How much does it cost to do that?
You actually believe this law is enforced? Silly person. You obviously have not been keeping up with the news.
As much as I hate it, zappepcs is exactly right on this. Management will not adjust itself to your terms. You need to adjust to their terms and concepts, or find new management (e.g. change jobs ... yeah, there are vast differences in managers).
Things to especially keep in mind include: 1: Express the issue in business terms, including short and long term costs, impact on revenues and sales, legal liabilities, and a thorough risk analysis (risks not only of a paradigm shift in technology, but also a shift in markets, staffing, etc). ... and 2: Give managers choices, but not too many. Two choices can usually work. Three or Four choices is better, even if one or two are obviously bad choices. More than that is probaby too many (depending on the complexity of the issue).
Put it in writing. Summarize entirely in not more than one page, better if it is one or two paragraphs. The whole report shouldn't be more than 2 to 6 pages, shorter is better. Then just say the full details can be made available if needed (they usually don't want it, but some will). And include your recommendation and why in one paragraph. The higher level the manager is, the shorter all this usually needs to be.