Firstly, I've got to say congratz for making that observation. But to be honest how many "How many more Operating Systems do we need" posts do we need?
I'd settle for Slashdot comments that said the things I like to say.
It is a similar situation for e-books. Once the content is viewable, it can be copied, even by retyping or photographing the resultant output. And as soon as a single "pirated" copy is made available, those with access can acquire it for free.
And by analogy, this is exactly why the music industry really should not fear the digital age. After all, copiers and scanners have been with us for a generation now, and books still sell in vast quantities. Sure, I could go through the trouble of OCR'ing the latest bestseller onto the Net for everyone to read, but the fact is, in a consumer-driven culture, people who read a book generally want their own copy. They want to feel the heft and smell the paper, and just as importantly, they want to demonstrate to others that they were cool enough to buy the lastest, hippest literature.
With music, the same is true. Sure, you can download a compressed copy of Radiohead's newest, but you really want to listen to it in its full unadulterated glory, and to enjoy the liner notes and the look of the CD. And you want your friends to see you consuming the item. There's a reason why middle-class people prefer hand-carved wood to functionally identical mass-produced plastic. And those same people will prefer the real CD to a bootleg copy, so long as the record industry successfully conveys the message that the real CD has authenticity and cachet.
That's a really good idea, almost. How about AMD advertises in tandem with Nvidia? They could put out widespread advertising blasting Intel making the traditional MHz/GHz ratings useless, and tell the public that the best measurement of performance is a third-party benchmark. Then they call the nForce the "new reference platform for PC horsepower" and say that the new AMD chip gets, e.g. 65 "NHz". Then of course, they'd have to offer a small rebate for anyone who gets a new nForce powered Hypertransport-equipped motherboard with an Athlon 65N.
The whole worry here is not so much this specific act, but the slippery slope. Right now, perhaps Borders is kicking known Borders shoplifters from their stores. Next it might be any shoplifters. Then it might be anyone convicted of any crime. Then it could be anyone who is currently receiving unemployment or otherwise on the dole. Then it could be anyone with a poor credit history or any other characteristic Borders deems as untrustworthy. And let's assume other stores start implementing this practice. What will happen? You'll wind up with tiers of stores...certain stores will only cater to the rich -- in the sense that the non-rich won't even be allowed in. Other stores will cater to the "honest" middle class. And finally there'll be "sub-stores" which charge tremendously marked-up prices and have guards and cameras and all sorts of onerous procedures, but the poor and "untrustworthy" will find that these types of stores are the only ones where they will be permitted to enter.
because when you steal the material, you discourage the author from producing more of the same material that you like so well
What you fail to consider is that a programmer might want to discourage an author from producing more of the same material...IN THIS FORMAT. Maybe cracking this "lousy scheme" would convince authors that they shouldn't give up on paper quite yet. And that sounds like a Good Thing.
and so society looses.
Seems to me that society is losing by the existence of these anti-historical methods of content creation. By which I mean, if we get to the point where books can't be kept, lent, or resold, we will be entering a point where our very notion of history will be dependent on the selfish goals of individuals and corporations. You seem to recall a presidential candidate writing a controversial magazine article 20 years ago. Oops, the magazine has "expired," and the information no longer exists. Or maybe its been republished in revisionist format, but there's no original to compare and contrast.
Furthermore, the concept of copyright is that you get to retain rights to your creation under the condition that you release them free to the public after a certain period of time has passed. The disgusting thing about these copy-protection schemes is that they renege on the second half of the deal. The author gets an exclusive copy right, but never has to pass his creation on to the public domain. Ever. Sure, more people might write under those circumstances, but less of their expertise will benefit humanity. Knowledge may go back to being effectively a trade secret, and we may enter a new Dark Age.
At that speed, it will take about a half-hour to download the runtime. (Specifically, 1746.32 seconds, or about 29 minutes, 6 seconds.)
Since we're talking about casual users anyway, the smart thing for Sun to do would be to make sure the current JRE is bundled with the various CD's from AOL, Earthlink, Worldnet and everyone else *but* MSN. It could be even offered as a feature:
GET A FREE (lame-ass Java) GAME SUITE, JUST FOR CHECKING OUT SpumNet!
Philips Audio is conducting a betatest of an mp3 boombox. In the application there is a place where you can recommend features for inclusion. You can also tell them how many hundreds of files you've encoded into.ogg format. Those people who wish to see.ogg become more widely accepted can make an impact by letting Philips know about it.
In any event, no matter how you feel about Vorbis, please let Philips know that you have absolutely no wma files nor any intention of using that format in the future!
You do not have any RIGHTS to privacy under the law, only a reasonable expectation of it.
Well, not exactly. The Supreme Court ruled in KATZ v. UNITED STATES, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) that your general right to privacy is not protected by the US Constitution, but that it is protected by the individual States. (In fact, they said the same thing about your right to life!) So, you may have a "right" to privacy, but (in the US) it is up to your State government to enforce it (or not.)
Subsequently, in SMITH v. MARYLAND, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), one of the litmus tests for whether a person is entitled to 4th Amendment protection of a reasonable expectation of privacy evolved out of the KATZ decision, namely, whether or not a person "seeks to preserve" something as private. In other words, if you do not take steps to make your conduct private, you shouldn't have an expectation of it being so. I think one could argue that a police officer, by the very public nature of his profession, can be said to have waived an expectation of privacy and is proactively *not* seeking to preserve his privacy.
The problem that I see from a Supreme Court point of view is that the Court could very well rule that, true, the officer is not protected by a Constitutional expectation of privacy, but as per KATZ, the SJC of Massachusetts is within its rights to interpret its State's laws to extend an officer's privacy to on-the-job protection. This case may only be winnable by Hyde if the US Supreme Ct. determines his right to freedom of speech is more basic than the officer's right to privacy through his state's laws or his right to reasonably expect privacy under the Constitution.
It's not that people who are cops don't have the same constitutional rights that the rest of us do. But while they are performing their public duties, they should temporarily surrender some of those rights. I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation.
For example, as a private citizen, if I want to wear a large button that says, "WHITE POWER," I should be allowed to do so. However, while acting as a police officer in uniform, I should not be allowed to wear it. I must give up some of my freedom of speech in order to execute my duties in a fair and impartial manner. I ought also give up some of my right to privacy while serving the public, don't you think?
Isn't that one of the reasons Caldera switched to per seat licensing? I'd guess they've been listening to the bean counters. Now all they have to do is give their product a fancy new name like LinuxDeluxe or something, so the beancounters will think they're getting above what the average Shovelware distro offers.
Reminds me of a condo where a friend of mine lives. She bought a unit at a dirt cheap price of $45K. Then shortly thereafter the building was advised to triple the asking price on their units because people mistakenly thought they must be substandard offerings. Sure enough, demand went up after the price hike.
I just can't see how any law-abiding citizen would have a problem with this
Most people aren't 100% law-abiding, are they? Ever smoke a joint? Spit in public? Swear on a public street? Stop your car temporarily in a spot where you weren't supposed to stop your car? Exceed the speed limit? Let your dog take a poop without cleaning it up? Cross at a location which is not an intersection?
Keep in mind that the Supreme Court recently ruled that the cops are within their rights to arrest you even for failing to wear a seat belt. Are you absolutely sure you haven't broken any laws recently?
Or maybe you might have a family member or friend who has done something illegal, and you've been spotted on camera talking with them. Perhaps you wouldn't mind the cops bringing you in for questioning so you can rat out your buddy. Or perhaps a judge would okay a search of your premises on the grounds that you were frequently associating with a known criminal.
But what's more worrisome is the idea that it will become much easier to keep an eye on people who are political threats: Opposition party rank-and-file workers and other political nuisances could find themselves in court for petty violations people don't normally receive summonses for. They could become the object of harrassment and search warrants, all "justified" because they were caught on camera throwing a chewing gum wrapper upon the sidewalk.
I'm afraid I fail to understand what's supposed to be so compelling about your (and everyone else's) objections to this.
"...what if someone was...falsely identified as someone else with an outstanding warrant?"
Well, then presumably the police would write up a ticket and go to your house and ask for ID, and then they'd apologize profusely for bothering you because oh, we're sorry, that's not you. Is this such a major inconvenience?
And we know how unfailingly polite the police are toward people they consider to be potential murderers and drug dealers. They would never arrest the wrong fellow, nor would they possibly even inadvertently kill an innocent person before that person got a chance to present ID.
You left out the worst part: Launch.com totally lost its nerve and has "temporarily" cancelled all its customization features. It went from being a totally cool revolutionary service to another boring net radio station. Sigh.
Of course, they had no revenue stream anyway, but that's a different issue.
irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals
according to m-w.com. Insofar as prejudice is a form of discrimination, it could be argued that equating homosexuality with bad behavior is a form of homophobia.
Also, homosexuality is not a "handicap" any more than heterosexuality is. At one time it was classified as a "disorder" in the DSM, but not since 1973.
And furthermore, the "homo" in homophobia isn't Latin, it's Greek, and it comes from homos, which means "same" in Classical Greek. I would guess that the word, which has been around at least since 1969, is not "PC", but was probably created by doctors and psychologists to describe a psychological condition.
And finally, you can't necessarily deduce the meaning of a word from its Greek/Latin roots, anyway. Take "hydrophobia" which, from its roots, means "fear of water," but in actuality, is a medical term for rabies (more specifically a symptom of the disease, in which exposure to liquids causes the subject to suffer involuntary throat spasms).
I think the issue with the preinstalls has less to do with newbie surfers and more to do with current AOL subscribers who just continue to subscribe out of total inertia or laziness. AOL's afraid that when those people buy a new PC which doesn't have a preinstalled AOL client, they'll say to themselves, "Lemme try this here NSM thingy."
Of course, if AOL and MS don't settle, AOL will wind up having to carpet-bomb all its current subscribers with special "AOL eXtreme uPgrade" CDs.
As far as the IE/Mozilla situation, I think it's much ado about nothing. I fail to see how my usage or non-usage of IE would affect Microsoft's revenue stream one iota. IMO, AOL holds two cards which keep their vast clientele subscribed: their buddy lists and their chat rooms. Everything else, browser, keyword, media player, is immaterial.
Dude, the TRS-80 (Model I) a/k/a Trash 80, was an extremely primitive Z80-based monochrome alphanumeric/block graphics display computer which had 4K ROM and 4K RAM (or 16K for the enhanced model) when it first came out in 1977. This thing had a fairly barebones operating system, basically one step up from a KIM-I. Radio Shack outlets usually had one CPU on display, and would let kids muck around with them for hours, which is how many old geezers got their first taste of computing. Sometimes they'd have another CPU in the window which was running "Dancing Demon," a stick figure that would jerk around in rhythm with some beeps and bops. (At least, I think it had sound, can't remember, the old brain is getting rusty.) If you were to compare it to a CBM machine, your best bet would be the CBM 2001/B.
OTOH, the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer 1(aka CoCo) came out in 1980, had a kewl 6809 microprocessor and was capable, after expansion, of up to 64K. It could pump out color graphics, sound, and had loads of great games. Although it also was originally available with 4K RAM, at least it had a pretty capacious 8K ROM. Furthermore, it had an RF modulator and could therefore be used on any TV set. It was roughly analogous to the Vic20. The later CoCo3 was more like the C-64, and was arguably the last and best of the early PEEK/POKE-style BASIC-programmable home computers. (The damn thing ran OS-9!) Unfortunately for Radio Shack, the CoCos remained also-rans, squeezed in between Commodore's low-priced assault and the Apple II's high-margin cool cachet.
Actually, the basis for most legal arguements is precident. If you show that the ISP kicked you off for spamming and don't kick off some other customer for the same offense, they can be sued quite thoroughly. You can say it's not true but it really is how our legal system works, if you want to believe it or not.
Saying this for the third time doesn't make it any more true. Legal precedent refers to prior decisions that fall under the realm of case law. In other words, if your ISP sues someone over a particular TOS violation and wins or loses, that decision may under certain circumstances be used as a template for subsequent decisions. Usually that entails the decision being published in a law journal of some kind. However, if your ISP *doesn't* sue someone, there is no decision, there's nothing about it in the law journal, and therefore there is no precedent. Got it?
You agree that AT&T, in its sole discretion, may terminate your password, account (or any part thereof) or use of the Service, and remove and discard any Content within the Service, for any reason
...in other words, you're agreeing up front that if they cut your service, you won't sue them, and it adds:
Our decision not to enforce a particular provision of this Agreement does not mean that we waive the right to enforce it.
...in other words, they can sue you, or not, at their discretion without waiving future rights. So, even if we grant your cockamamie concept that the ISP doesn't ordinarily have the right to selectively enforce their contract, you specifically grant them this right when you agree to the contract. (And Worldnet is using fairly standard TOS boilerplate language.)
Really the whole idea is absurd on its face. If someone beats the crap out of you, they can get away with it if they can prove that you let your girlfriend get away with smacking you last week? If you get a speeding ticket, you can beat it by pointing out that the State of California has failed to fine some other speeding driver within its borders? Try that one in Traffic Court!
Simply using a public Library as an example of fair use would have made napster fall well withing legal bounds. Either the lawyers don't know, or don't care. You're welcome to take your pick.
Let's see. Napster's million-dollar legal team couldn't figure out this blindingly obvious defense, but you can, sitting in your dorm room wearing dirty tube socks. Can I pick that you are a moron?
If an ISP doesn't enforce it's TOS on one consumer, they can't enforce it on any...
You said this twice already, and there's no basis in fact to it. If you breach a contract, it's not a defense to say, "Others violated the same contract and got away with it, so why can't I?" Think about it. If you lend a friend $500 and he signs an IOU, he can't disregard it simply because he knows you forgave someone else's debt.
If some lawyers had a hand in the high-tech industry, all this legislation against consumers (and spam) would be a thing of the past.
What are you talking about? The high-tech industry is rife with lawyers. Despite that, it's not feasible for a large ISP to sue all of its TOS violators, there are just too many. So instead, they pick a few egregious contract breakers to set a "precident" and hope that the fear of prosecution and a nice threatening cease-and-desist letter will scare others into compliance.
Re:High Warp Restriction?
on
Voyager Eulogy
·
· Score: 1
Somebody obviously doesn't understand physics and what c represents.
Except, check out the guy's knowledge of geek code and his low/. number. It's inconceivable, freshman though he may be, that he is that utterly ignorant of relativity. Conclusion, he is trolling. I would add "badly," but he appears to have gotten at least one fish.
Slashdot Mirror
Firstly, I've got to say congratz for making that observation. But to be honest how many "How many more Operating Systems do we need" posts do we need?
I'd settle for Slashdot comments that said the things I like to say.
I think you mean MSXML, which, knowing Microsoft, will wind up subtly incompatible with any other XML out there.
And by analogy, this is exactly why the music industry really should not fear the digital age. After all, copiers and scanners have been with us for a generation now, and books still sell in vast quantities. Sure, I could go through the trouble of OCR'ing the latest bestseller onto the Net for everyone to read, but the fact is, in a consumer-driven culture, people who read a book generally want their own copy. They want to feel the heft and smell the paper, and just as importantly, they want to demonstrate to others that they were cool enough to buy the lastest, hippest literature.
With music, the same is true. Sure, you can download a compressed copy of Radiohead's newest, but you really want to listen to it in its full unadulterated glory, and to enjoy the liner notes and the look of the CD. And you want your friends to see you consuming the item. There's a reason why middle-class people prefer hand-carved wood to functionally identical mass-produced plastic. And those same people will prefer the real CD to a bootleg copy, so long as the record industry successfully conveys the message that the real CD has authenticity and cachet.
That's a really good idea, almost. How about AMD advertises in tandem with Nvidia? They could put out widespread advertising blasting Intel making the traditional MHz/GHz ratings useless, and tell the public that the best measurement of performance is a third-party benchmark. Then they call the nForce the "new reference platform for PC horsepower" and say that the new AMD chip gets, e.g. 65 "NHz". Then of course, they'd have to offer a small rebate for anyone who gets a new nForce powered Hypertransport-equipped motherboard with an Athlon 65N.
The whole worry here is not so much this specific act, but the slippery slope. Right now, perhaps Borders is kicking known Borders shoplifters from their stores. Next it might be any shoplifters. Then it might be anyone convicted of any crime. Then it could be anyone who is currently receiving unemployment or otherwise on the dole. Then it could be anyone with a poor credit history or any other characteristic Borders deems as untrustworthy. And let's assume other stores start implementing this practice. What will happen? You'll wind up with tiers of stores...certain stores will only cater to the rich -- in the sense that the non-rich won't even be allowed in. Other stores will cater to the "honest" middle class. And finally there'll be "sub-stores" which charge tremendously marked-up prices and have guards and cameras and all sorts of onerous procedures, but the poor and "untrustworthy" will find that these types of stores are the only ones where they will be permitted to enter.
I wonder, if we go ahead and s/mp3/riaa/g all our mp3 files and rerelease them into the net, will the RIAA turn around and sue itself?
What you fail to consider is that a programmer might want to discourage an author from producing more of the same material...IN THIS FORMAT. Maybe cracking this "lousy scheme" would convince authors that they shouldn't give up on paper quite yet. And that sounds like a Good Thing.
and so society looses.
Seems to me that society is losing by the existence of these anti-historical methods of content creation. By which I mean, if we get to the point where books can't be kept, lent, or resold, we will be entering a point where our very notion of history will be dependent on the selfish goals of individuals and corporations. You seem to recall a presidential candidate writing a controversial magazine article 20 years ago. Oops, the magazine has "expired," and the information no longer exists. Or maybe its been republished in revisionist format, but there's no original to compare and contrast.
Furthermore, the concept of copyright is that you get to retain rights to your creation under the condition that you release them free to the public after a certain period of time has passed. The disgusting thing about these copy-protection schemes is that they renege on the second half of the deal. The author gets an exclusive copy right, but never has to pass his creation on to the public domain. Ever. Sure, more people might write under those circumstances, but less of their expertise will benefit humanity. Knowledge may go back to being effectively a trade secret, and we may enter a new Dark Age.
Sound of five dropped coins
Turns the head twice as fast as
Chsssh of rustling leaves
Since we're talking about casual users anyway, the smart thing for Sun to do would be to make sure the current JRE is bundled with the various CD's from AOL, Earthlink, Worldnet and everyone else *but* MSN. It could be even offered as a feature:
GET A FREE (lame-ass Java) GAME SUITE, JUST FOR CHECKING OUT SpumNet!
In any event, no matter how you feel about Vorbis, please let Philips know that you have absolutely no wma files nor any intention of using that format in the future!
Well, not exactly. The Supreme Court ruled in KATZ v. UNITED STATES, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) that your general right to privacy is not protected by the US Constitution, but that it is protected by the individual States. (In fact, they said the same thing about your right to life!) So, you may have a "right" to privacy, but (in the US) it is up to your State government to enforce it (or not.)
Subsequently, in SMITH v. MARYLAND, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), one of the litmus tests for whether a person is entitled to 4th Amendment protection of a reasonable expectation of privacy evolved out of the KATZ decision, namely, whether or not a person "seeks to preserve" something as private. In other words, if you do not take steps to make your conduct private, you shouldn't have an expectation of it being so. I think one could argue that a police officer, by the very public nature of his profession, can be said to have waived an expectation of privacy and is proactively *not* seeking to preserve his privacy.
The problem that I see from a Supreme Court point of view is that the Court could very well rule that, true, the officer is not protected by a Constitutional expectation of privacy, but as per KATZ, the SJC of Massachusetts is within its rights to interpret its State's laws to extend an officer's privacy to on-the-job protection. This case may only be winnable by Hyde if the US Supreme Ct. determines his right to freedom of speech is more basic than the officer's right to privacy through his state's laws or his right to reasonably expect privacy under the Constitution.
Of course, IANAL so YMMV.
It's not that people who are cops don't have the same constitutional rights that the rest of us do. But while they are performing their public duties, they should temporarily surrender some of those rights. I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation.
For example, as a private citizen, if I want to wear a large button that says, "WHITE POWER," I should be allowed to do so. However, while acting as a police officer in uniform, I should not be allowed to wear it. I must give up some of my freedom of speech in order to execute my duties in a fair and impartial manner. I ought also give up some of my right to privacy while serving the public, don't you think?
Reminds me of a condo where a friend of mine lives. She bought a unit at a dirt cheap price of $45K. Then shortly thereafter the building was advised to triple the asking price on their units because people mistakenly thought they must be substandard offerings. Sure enough, demand went up after the price hike.
Most people aren't 100% law-abiding, are they? Ever smoke a joint? Spit in public? Swear on a public street? Stop your car temporarily in a spot where you weren't supposed to stop your car? Exceed the speed limit? Let your dog take a poop without cleaning it up? Cross at a location which is not an intersection? Keep in mind that the Supreme Court recently ruled that the cops are within their rights to arrest you even for failing to wear a seat belt. Are you absolutely sure you haven't broken any laws recently?
Or maybe you might have a family member or friend who has done something illegal, and you've been spotted on camera talking with them. Perhaps you wouldn't mind the cops bringing you in for questioning so you can rat out your buddy. Or perhaps a judge would okay a search of your premises on the grounds that you were frequently associating with a known criminal.
But what's more worrisome is the idea that it will become much easier to keep an eye on people who are political threats: Opposition party rank-and-file workers and other political nuisances could find themselves in court for petty violations people don't normally receive summonses for. They could become the object of harrassment and search warrants, all "justified" because they were caught on camera throwing a chewing gum wrapper upon the sidewalk.
And we know how unfailingly polite the police are toward people they consider to be potential murderers and drug dealers. They would never arrest the wrong fellow, nor would they possibly even inadvertently kill an innocent person before that person got a chance to present ID.
No, that's not what happened to e-gold.com. That's what happened to Gold-Age.net, which, frankly, doesn't have the most confidence-inspiring website.
E-gold is still around.
...didn't work in the past (DIVX)
:-))
...won't work in the future (DiVX
Of course, they had no revenue stream anyway, but that's a different issue.
Actually, homophobia is
according to m-w.com. Insofar as prejudice is a form of discrimination, it could be argued that equating homosexuality with bad behavior is a form of homophobia.Also, homosexuality is not a "handicap" any more than heterosexuality is. At one time it was classified as a "disorder" in the DSM, but not since 1973.
And furthermore, the "homo" in homophobia isn't Latin, it's Greek, and it comes from homos, which means "same" in Classical Greek. I would guess that the word, which has been around at least since 1969, is not "PC", but was probably created by doctors and psychologists to describe a psychological condition.
And finally, you can't necessarily deduce the meaning of a word from its Greek/Latin roots, anyway. Take "hydrophobia" which, from its roots, means "fear of water," but in actuality, is a medical term for rabies (more specifically a symptom of the disease, in which exposure to liquids causes the subject to suffer involuntary throat spasms).
Of course, if AOL and MS don't settle, AOL will wind up having to carpet-bomb all its current subscribers with special "AOL eXtreme uPgrade" CDs.
As far as the IE/Mozilla situation, I think it's much ado about nothing. I fail to see how my usage or non-usage of IE would affect Microsoft's revenue stream one iota. IMO, AOL holds two cards which keep their vast clientele subscribed: their buddy lists and their chat rooms. Everything else, browser, keyword, media player, is immaterial.
Dude, the TRS-80 (Model I) a/k/a Trash 80, was an extremely primitive Z80-based monochrome alphanumeric/block graphics display computer which had 4K ROM and 4K RAM (or 16K for the enhanced model) when it first came out in 1977. This thing had a fairly barebones operating system, basically one step up from a KIM-I. Radio Shack outlets usually had one CPU on display, and would let kids muck around with them for hours, which is how many old geezers got their first taste of computing. Sometimes they'd have another CPU in the window which was running "Dancing Demon," a stick figure that would jerk around in rhythm with some beeps and bops. (At least, I think it had sound, can't remember, the old brain is getting rusty.) If you were to compare it to a CBM machine, your best bet would be the CBM 2001/B.
OTOH, the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer 1(aka CoCo) came out in 1980, had a kewl 6809 microprocessor and was capable, after expansion, of up to 64K. It could pump out color graphics, sound, and had loads of great games. Although it also was originally available with 4K RAM, at least it had a pretty capacious 8K ROM. Furthermore, it had an RF modulator and could therefore be used on any TV set. It was roughly analogous to the Vic20. The later CoCo3 was more like the C-64, and was arguably the last and best of the early PEEK/POKE-style BASIC-programmable home computers. (The damn thing ran OS-9!) Unfortunately for Radio Shack, the CoCos remained also-rans, squeezed in between Commodore's low-priced assault and the Apple II's high-margin cool cachet.
Saying this for the third time doesn't make it any more true. Legal precedent refers to prior decisions that fall under the realm of case law. In other words, if your ISP sues someone over a particular TOS violation and wins or loses, that decision may under certain circumstances be used as a template for subsequent decisions. Usually that entails the decision being published in a law journal of some kind. However, if your ISP *doesn't* sue someone, there is no decision, there's nothing about it in the law journal, and therefore there is no precedent. Got it?
You might want to check out this Worldnet TOS agreement, where it says, in part:
Really the whole idea is absurd on its face. If someone beats the crap out of you, they can get away with it if they can prove that you let your girlfriend get away with smacking you last week? If you get a speeding ticket, you can beat it by pointing out that the State of California has failed to fine some other speeding driver within its borders? Try that one in Traffic Court!
Simply using a public Library as an example of fair use would have made napster fall well withing legal bounds. Either the lawyers don't know, or don't care. You're welcome to take your pick.
Let's see. Napster's million-dollar legal team couldn't figure out this blindingly obvious defense, but you can, sitting in your dorm room wearing dirty tube socks. Can I pick that you are a moron?
You said this twice already, and there's no basis in fact to it. If you breach a contract, it's not a defense to say, "Others violated the same contract and got away with it, so why can't I?" Think about it. If you lend a friend $500 and he signs an IOU, he can't disregard it simply because he knows you forgave someone else's debt. If some lawyers had a hand in the high-tech industry, all this legislation against consumers (and spam) would be a thing of the past.
What are you talking about? The high-tech industry is rife with lawyers. Despite that, it's not feasible for a large ISP to sue all of its TOS violators, there are just too many. So instead, they pick a few egregious contract breakers to set a "precident" and hope that the fear of prosecution and a nice threatening cease-and-desist letter will scare others into compliance.
Except, check out the guy's knowledge of geek code and his low /. number. It's inconceivable, freshman though he may be, that he is that utterly ignorant of relativity. Conclusion, he is trolling. I would add "badly," but he appears to have gotten at least one fish.
I'll bash Microsoft as much as the next luser, but once again this is FUD spread by Slashdot's inability to read the stories it's linking from.