I think that Slashdot took the right course here (motivated by Andover or not). There are plenty of battles out there to fight, but they should be chosen with some care.
In overturning controversial laws, public interest associations or other groups will find or create a test case-- a set of circumstances which strictly conflicts with a particular law. This allows courts to review that law with minimal focus on other factors that may confuse the issue.
The best example of this is Rosa Parks. The common understanding is that Ms. Parks was told to give up her seat for a white man, and her refusal led to overturning of the Jim Crow laws in the American South. This is largely true, of course, and Rosa Parks' courage should be applauded. There was nothing innocent about the action, however; it was organized by a number of civil rights organizations precisely to raise the issues which were subsequently decided.
If Slashdot wished to challenge the DMCA, this would be the way to do it. To accept a challenge from the Scientologists would only invite litigation, and would no doubt result in limiting or even ending the (mostly) great debates on the site.
I have read a number of the links listed above, and everything I have read leads me to conclude that Scientology is, in fact, a dangerous and vindictive organization (some might say cult). It also appears clear to me that the organization will use its deep cash and legal resources to fight off any attempts at disparagement or the posting of any of their material. Were Slashdot to pursue this matter, the eventual case would most likely not resolve any DMCA issues, but rather become bogged down by numerous corollary issues, injunctions, and the like.
If Slashdot wants to challenge the DMCA, there are better ways to do it, and it should undertake the challenge in an organized and reasoned manner. Acting in the defensive and responding to an attack on this issue would not resolve anything.
-- my $0.02; and IAMANAL (I am not an anal lawyer)
I've wanted to play with linuxPPC for some time, but I'm balking at buying an actual macintosh ($$$). If anyone knows, I was wondering if it'd be possible to hack a tivo to the point that it can run linux effectively? (I know it runs linux now: I'm talking about using it as a regular box). I'm not all that familiar with the hardware, but apparently they're not built for expansion. I suppose the most important parts are the ethernet and a removable disk.
My laptop has a bt848 for the tv out, and I've used it to run tv out fairly well. I should point out that I'm running on the framebuffer, however, not running X.
I know there are commercial cards out there with this chip, and it's fairly well documented for linux.
Just a brief bitchy note (I assume at this point serious readers have long since passed this story by):
If they want to pronounce it OS ten, why not call it OS TEN? As I understand it, Latin as a spoken language has been dead for something > 30 years. At this point, it's either OS X(Eks) or OS Ten (ten).
At the very least, just leave it up to me. If you draw a big X on the box, I may choose to call it X.
This applies to the cue-cats that were sent out to magazine subscribers, but what about the ones handed out at radio shack? I've seen ads claiming they'll give you one "free", without any indication that DC is just loaning it to you. I just spent a few minutes poking around their website, and it's the same thing. "Pick up your FREE:CueCat today...", "Get one FREE today..." and so on. Now IANAL, but this sounds like false advertising to me.
If OS X runs on BSD, and Microsoft apps run on OS X, doesn't that mean that they're running on BSD? And after that, how much of a stretch is it to have Office and so on running on plain BSD without the Mac layers?
(Imagine if Microsoft Outlook could run on OpenBSD. The holes would give Theo a heart attack)
Slashdot Mirror
I think that Slashdot took the right course here (motivated by Andover or not). There are plenty of battles out there to fight, but they should be chosen with some care. In overturning controversial laws, public interest associations or other groups will find or create a test case-- a set of circumstances which strictly conflicts with a particular law. This allows courts to review that law with minimal focus on other factors that may confuse the issue. The best example of this is Rosa Parks. The common understanding is that Ms. Parks was told to give up her seat for a white man, and her refusal led to overturning of the Jim Crow laws in the American South. This is largely true, of course, and Rosa Parks' courage should be applauded. There was nothing innocent about the action, however; it was organized by a number of civil rights organizations precisely to raise the issues which were subsequently decided. If Slashdot wished to challenge the DMCA, this would be the way to do it. To accept a challenge from the Scientologists would only invite litigation, and would no doubt result in limiting or even ending the (mostly) great debates on the site. I have read a number of the links listed above, and everything I have read leads me to conclude that Scientology is, in fact, a dangerous and vindictive organization (some might say cult). It also appears clear to me that the organization will use its deep cash and legal resources to fight off any attempts at disparagement or the posting of any of their material. Were Slashdot to pursue this matter, the eventual case would most likely not resolve any DMCA issues, but rather become bogged down by numerous corollary issues, injunctions, and the like. If Slashdot wants to challenge the DMCA, there are better ways to do it, and it should undertake the challenge in an organized and reasoned manner. Acting in the defensive and responding to an attack on this issue would not resolve anything. -- my $0.02; and IAMANAL (I am not an anal lawyer)
pico (walk away slowly)
Mir's coming down any day now.
Hey, just in case you're wondering, it's the laser. Cheers.
I've wanted to play with linuxPPC for some time, but I'm balking at buying an actual macintosh ($$$). If anyone knows, I was wondering if it'd be possible to hack a tivo to the point that it can run linux effectively? (I know it runs linux now: I'm talking about using it as a regular box). I'm not all that familiar with the hardware, but apparently they're not built for expansion. I suppose the most important parts are the ethernet and a removable disk.
My laptop has a bt848 for the tv out, and I've used it to run tv out fairly well. I should point out that I'm running on the framebuffer, however, not running X. I know there are commercial cards out there with this chip, and it's fairly well documented for linux.
Just a brief bitchy note (I assume at this point serious readers have long since passed this story by):
If they want to pronounce it OS ten, why not call it OS TEN? As I understand it, Latin as a spoken language has been dead for something > 30 years. At this point, it's either OS X(Eks) or OS Ten (ten).
At the very least, just leave it up to me. If you draw a big X on the box, I may choose to call it X.
I don't use the word hero very often, but this guy is _the_greatest_hero_of_his_generation_.
- L. Hutz
This applies to the cue-cats that were sent out to magazine subscribers, but what about the ones handed out at radio shack? I've seen ads claiming they'll give you one "free", without any indication that DC is just loaning it to you. I just spent a few minutes poking around their website, and it's the same thing. "Pick up your FREE :CueCat today...", "Get one FREE today..." and so on. Now IANAL, but this sounds like false advertising to me.
If OS X runs on BSD, and Microsoft apps run on OS X, doesn't that mean that they're running on BSD? And after that, how much of a stretch is it to have Office and so on running on plain BSD without the Mac layers?
(Imagine if Microsoft Outlook could run on OpenBSD. The holes would give Theo a heart attack)