In the USA, you don't have full protection of Free Speech, Religion or Press as per the First Admendment. So many people confuse Free Speech/Press/Religion with almost total anarchist control of things.
You can't practice a religion in which harm is done to animal or human, period. Human sacrifices are out, even if they are part of your religion. The same with animals. If you had Freedom of Religion as most people feel it is, then this should be legal, as protected. It isn't.
The same with Press. You can't just burst into anyone's home and photograph their items, write up a story, steal diaries and print all of them, that's quite a few violations there. But I've heard many people claim that there's a Freedom of Press to allow Press to get a story. Only if the rights of others aren't infringed upon, they may.
And now to Speech. You don't have the right to say anything you want. You can't threaten someone's life and make them in fear of their lives constantly. You can't harass them constantly. You can't shout out "BOMB" or "FIRE" in a public place. All of these are speech, but they're illegal due to the possiblity of harm to others.
So, to my point on this long rant, Virii and Illegal Devices cannot be protected by free speech, because they can cause irrepairable harm to humans and machines. Virii are intended to do some kind of unwanted action on a computer, which leads to harm of the machine or the user. Illegal, even under the First Admendment. You can't tell people how to kill Claudia Schiffer when she's driving through Beverly Hills in exact detail, because the implications could result in her death.
However, fictitious depictions of death or destruction ARE protected, because they don't implicate any specific person, and as such cannot be construed to harm anyone.
I hope this helps clarify some things. IANAL, but there are some part of common sense to the ruling. You can code something and have it protected by free speech as long as it doesn't do anything illegal to people's machines or people themselves (can't make a software that will send out a person's personal data, you know?). Dragon Magic
Stocks, Bill Gates and 'Suits
on
Microsoft Loses
·
· Score: 1
First off, the stocks aren't that far "dropped". They're still fairly high, considering the past year.
It's just that people who bought stocks last week are probably miffed to no end, about a severe loss they took with today's leveling.
On another note, if the company is broken up or somehow reassembled, how will Bill Gates be positioned, and how will his portfolio be with the company? To effectively seperate areas of the company, do they not have to enforce that Mr. Gates only own stock in one of these companies?
And while we're on the subject, I don't see many people holding onto stocks if they're just in it for the money and not the ownership of a part of the company. With this guilty plead, many companies who were unfairly kept from the operating system and browser field on Intel-based PCs have a precendence to sue for losses and damages. This could be billions of dollars. With an outstanding volume of 130 million, that could be at least $10 per share drop for paid judgments, not including costs for lawyers.
Would you stay around with the threat of losing even more money for lawsuits if you were just buying MSFT to better your portfolio and dividends?
Slashdot Mirror
In the USA, you don't have full protection of Free Speech, Religion or Press as per the First Admendment. So many people confuse Free Speech/Press/Religion with almost total anarchist control of things.
You can't practice a religion in which harm is done to animal or human, period. Human sacrifices are out, even if they are part of your religion. The same with animals. If you had Freedom of Religion as most people feel it is, then this should be legal, as protected. It isn't.
The same with Press. You can't just burst into anyone's home and photograph their items, write up a story, steal diaries and print all of them, that's quite a few violations there. But I've heard many people claim that there's a Freedom of Press to allow Press to get a story. Only if the rights of others aren't infringed upon, they may.
And now to Speech. You don't have the right to say anything you want. You can't threaten someone's life and make them in fear of their lives constantly. You can't harass them constantly. You can't shout out "BOMB" or "FIRE" in a public place. All of these are speech, but they're illegal due to the possiblity of harm to others.
So, to my point on this long rant, Virii and Illegal Devices cannot be protected by free speech, because they can cause irrepairable harm to humans and machines. Virii are intended to do some kind of unwanted action on a computer, which leads to harm of the machine or the user. Illegal, even under the First Admendment. You can't tell people how to kill Claudia Schiffer when she's driving through Beverly Hills in exact detail, because the implications could result in her death.
However, fictitious depictions of death or destruction ARE protected, because they don't implicate any specific person, and as such cannot be construed to harm anyone.
I hope this helps clarify some things. IANAL, but there are some part of common sense to the ruling. You can code something and have it protected by free speech as long as it doesn't do anything illegal to people's machines or people themselves (can't make a software that will send out a person's personal data, you know?).
Dragon Magic
First off, the stocks aren't that far "dropped". They're still fairly high, considering the past year.
It's just that people who bought stocks last week are probably miffed to no end, about a severe loss they took with today's leveling.
On another note, if the company is broken up or somehow reassembled, how will Bill Gates be positioned, and how will his portfolio be with the company? To effectively seperate areas of the company, do they not have to enforce that Mr. Gates only own stock in one of these companies?
And while we're on the subject, I don't see many people holding onto stocks if they're just in it for the money and not the ownership of a part of the company. With this guilty plead, many companies who were unfairly kept from the operating system and browser field on Intel-based PCs have a precendence to sue for losses and damages. This could be billions of dollars. With an outstanding volume of 130 million, that could be at least $10 per share drop for paid judgments, not including costs for lawyers.
Would you stay around with the threat of losing even more money for lawsuits if you were just buying MSFT to better your portfolio and dividends?
Dragon Magic