I think that the Green Party, instead of being blamed for losing Gore the election, should be complaining to it's members about how their last minute compromise of conscience resulted in the Green Party's loss of federal matching funds in 2004, and still didn't make a difference in the election.
I recall Douglas Adams's theory of the Shoe Event Horizon. As civilization progresses, a greater portion of our gross national product is dedicated to the design, production, marketing, and distribution of shoes. Eventually society collapses, after the planet's surface is covered with the remnants of cheap Italian high heels.
Essentially, the Good Judge has found a technical problem - those darn incriminating e-mails that Ollie North deleted to cover his hiney over Iran Contra were in fact still in the system. Instead of urging a technical solution "Delete means Delete", he urges a legal solution that is entirely outside of the traditions of the law.
He's not really urging a statute of limitations on e-mail. Rather, it seems he is proposing that e-mail messages that are greater than 6 months old should not be used as evidence. I think this is wrong.
It's one thing to parade the horribles such as the flamebait message you wrote years ago coming back to haunt you when you apply for a job at Microsoft's Linux division 8 years from now, but what about this: Even today, emails are being used as evidence prove the existance of contracts - I believe that proposed changes to the Uniform Commerical Code deal with this sort of thing. If you can say that the slander you wrote six months ago shouldn't be considered in court, then why should they admit as evidence the e-mail from Bill Gates offering you shares for coming over to the dark side?
Also, why should the law ignore old e-mails when it embraces old letters? Heck, under the "ancient documents" rule, old documents can be admitted to evidence over hearsay objections.
If the judge wants to protect us from our old messages, then our legislatures to pass laws to compel OS and application publishers to provide a secure delete function.
Again, whatever Dell said about Linux in November, 1999 has to be regarded as stale. Dell's page (link kindly provided by the Microsoft Corporation) says this:
Thinking about Linux and how it will play in your high-tech environment?
You're not alone. Lots of people are looking into Linux as a low cost, stable Operating System alternative. Linux is becoming an important part of the Internet Infrastructure with an impressive 33% of web hosting servers running Linux - and that number is growing. Linux is also widely deployed on file and print, e-mail and application servers and on workstations for application development.
Dell and Red Hat have teamed up to deliver the most comprehensive menu of Linux based products, services and solution stacks available.
Announcing the Dell and Red Hat One Source Alliance
Dell and Red Hat have combined forces to form the One Source Alliance, a unique relationship that unites Red Hat's leadership in the Open Source market with Dell's commitment to meeting the demand for Linux from the edge of the Internet to the heart of the Enterprise. Our goal is to speed the commercial acceptance and adoption of Linux and to provide one source for Linux solutions.
The One Source Alliance includes collaborative development of products, co-development and delivery of global service offerings, and solutions that are enterprise-ready, Red Hat certified and offer the best customer experience. Together, we are also giving back to the community by developing tools and test suites that have been made open source and are readily available.
Through the Alliance, Dell and Red Hat intend to work together to promote the adoption of Linux, offer the services and solutions the community is looking for and drive future technology innovations to support the infrastructure computing needs of the Internet economy.
At the bottom of the page, Mr. Gates et. al. kindly point out that the page was last updated on November 1, 1999. Also, it's a comparison between Windows NT Server 4.0, not Windows 2000 Professional (or whatever they call it these days).
What does this mean? Nothing really, not anymore. It's stale data.
Maybe it's time for both Microsoft and the Linux community to update the page. As for Dell, it's not that hard to believe they would have said what they said about Linux - last year, before the recent Linux boom and the Microsoft verdict.
Essentially, Microsoft is asking for twice the amount of time that is normally allowed to file a written brief. When you look at it from the perspective that it's a particularly complex case, giving the parties 60 days to file an appellate brief instead of the typical 30 days is not out of the ordinary.
Of course, if the government responds quickly to the Microsoft brief, then the case can be heard sooner rather than later.
Under the circumstances, I do not feel that the government will argue against this. Microsoft's attorneys have been working on a brief for a very long time, and the government won't get to see it until it has been filed with the court. While arguably, Microsoft does not need 60 days, the government will want 60 days to respond.
Also, the idea that Microsoft is delaying the case so that George Bush can get elected and drop the whole matter isn't really critical here. Under ordinary civil procedure rules, the case would not be heard before the appellate court until after the election anyway, and any decision, either for or against Microsoft, is going to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the final analysis - I just do not see that this story is indicative of a Secret Microsoft Plot to Rule the World.
Now Microsoft Bob on the other hand - that was just plain evil.
Others have pointed out that judicial ethics require the avoidance of an appearance of impropriety. They claim that because Rehnquist's son is working for a law firm representing Microsoft in an entirely unrelated matter, Rehnquist himself is somehow tainted.
However, neither Rehnquist nor his son are financially interested in the case. If Rehnquist owned stock in Microsoft, then he should recuse himself, because his fortunes may be riding on the decision the Supreme Court would have to make. But this is not the case here. The most either of them stand to gain by a biased decision towards Microsoft is the continued employment of Rehnquist the Younger - and this is already probably going to be happening already. Rehnquist the Younger does not need Microsoft to stay afloat to maintain his position in the law firm where he works.
The reasoning behind the alleged appearance of impropriety is thus tenuous at best. It is equivalent to recusing yourself from a business decision to buy Apple G4's for the office because your brother just happens to work for Apple as an accountant.
Of course, if Rehnquist's son were on the board of directors of Microsoft, or perhaps even just a staff attorney directly on the Microsoft payroll, it would be another matter.
A friend of mine runs a small business in Japan called japanime.com. His company will purchase Japanese anime items on request. If you ask them nicely enough, they may be willing to look for clear plastic palm buttons...
The UN's elite UNIT taskforce will maintain and operate the new telescope. Ordinarily, I would be wary of a military organization operating a science project, but they apparantly have the assistance of a Doctor with experience in that sort of thing.
More - And now for another point of view
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 1
There's something that I had forgotten to add to this. With respect to the idea that "domain names are not property", the court's decision was based on the common law concept that the tort of conversion applies only to chattel, which has been defined by case law to consist only of "tangible personal property". What's that? If you can put it into a box (not a virtual box) and ship it somewhere, then it's tangible.
Please note that while the court did dismiss the claim on the basis that the tort of conversion did not apply, the court did allow the plaintiff original registrants of sex.com to amend their complaint to include a claim for unfair business practices. The result will be the same - ultimately the court will order the defendant to transfer the rights to sex.com back to the original owner. It is unfair to say that there is no remedy for the "theft" of a domain name, even if the law may decide that a domain name is intangible and cannot be stolen (a trait shared by trademarks and copyrights).
Consider this as a matter of programming syntax. The lawyer for the plaintiff used the wrong function in crafting his program, and the system crashed. Now, he gets to debug his program and run it again. This time it should work.
And now for another point of view
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 1
Enough with the lawyer bashing already. The article sounds like a load of whiny tripe. Let's look seriously at the alleged gross injustices perpetrated by our legal system in the service of corporate lackeys identified within the article:
1. "Domain names aren't property and therefore cannot be stolen"
Why is this inherently unjust? We do not treat the electromagnetic spectrum as the sort of Oklahoma land rush that Internet domain names became. Why should people who can type fast enough to register "mtv.com" hold a trademarked business name hostage? Trademark protection has been around a lot longer than the Internet.
This issue is, of course, subject to debate. There are various interests involved here, protection of trademarks vs. the winners of the Internet Land Rush is just one. However, in the great scheme of things, this issue is being, and should be, resolved by the traditional methods of resolving conflicting rights: the Law and the political process. Nobody is going to take slashdot's or yahoo's or amazon.com's domain name away from them. But why should the law protect some schmo who manages to register abcnewsfan.com? Let him build his own trademark instead of cashing in on someone else's.
2. The ability to decrypt a DVD cooresponds directly with the intent to pirate it.
While it is very understandable that Linux should have DVD drivers just like other operating systems, should these drivers have been authored to allow users to download digitally perfect DVD movies onto their hard drives, with the potential for illegal distribution? That's really the big issue with DeCSS. If DeCSS were simply a DVD driver for Linux nobody in the industry would have cared. However, DeCSS + DVD-RAM = the potential for digitally perfect copies of everything released on DVD. Yes, I know you cannot (yet) put as much data on a DVD-RAM as a publisher can on a DVD, but the potential is out there. Release a Linux DVD driver that does not allow you to copy a DVD and you won't be accused of piracy.
3. Linking to a program declared illegal is itself illegal.
So we should be able to offer links to illegally duplicated software or even child pornography stored on someone else's server? While the actual present issue is that people shouldn't get sued for linking to DeCSS, an absolute right to link to any matter, legal or illegal, is not in the best interests of society.
I am not technically savvy, at least not nearly as much as the typical slashdot member. I don't even use Linux. (If I am technically incorrect with regard to DeCSS I apologize for my ignorance in advance.) But, I think the point that the author does not understand is that just because something is technically feasible doesn't mean that we should allow it. I am not in favor of technology run amuck in just the same way that I am not in favor of science run amuck. Also, the rights of others, even detestible mega-corporations, have to be respected if we expect our own rights to be respected. The system will stomp on those who attempt to work outside of it. To those who support information freedom, look to the civil rights movement and how long that took to get any real results (and it's not over yet). Then, write your checks to EFF. But enough with the whining already.
Apparently Swedish Palm developer and University of Gävle lecturer Aaron Ardiri, one of the original authors of Liberty, was the one who wrote the Palm Trojan, disguised as a Liberty crack. What does Mr. Ethetton think about that?
Of course, I'd be really impressed if the trojan could upload to Reuters false press releases concerning Microsoft earnings while at the same time automatically selling Microsoft short on my eTrade account.
Really, one shouldn't be surprised at this sort of thing any longer. Apple's only true innovations are in the area of style. It makes perfect sense for them to sue over leaks of the shape of the latest Apple box rather then sue over leaks of substantive improvements.
Of course, there are other Apple innovations, such as extreme hyperbole in advertising ("twice as fast as the fastest [insert name of processor]"), a grand tradition of crappy keyboards, hockey-puck mice (with only one button), missing floppy drives, and an all-encompassing goal of making damn sure that the software and peripherals that you want to move from your old Apple to your new Apple just won't work any longer.
This evening, friends and I went to Fry's in Sacramento. My friend Sue bought herself a new Apple notebook because her old Apple notebook couldn't access the Internet any longer because her various i/o drivers all managed to conflict with one another creating a complete inability to go on line despite uninstalling and reinstalling all the software - obviously a triumph of Apple's superior crash-free and easy to use user environment. She also has to find another way of hotsyncing her Palm to her notebook, because Mr. Jobs & Co. kindly removed the extraneous serial port that no one was really using anyway. And she's just one of "the rest of us" average users. I thought that the idea of the computer for the rest of us was to support the needs of the consumer, rather than force the consumer to change the way they work whenever the official style changes.
Apple has to defend their innovations in style, because once you strip the style to get to the substance beneath, you can't find anything all that more creative and reliable than Windows 98.
Urusei Yatsura - Jealous space-oni Princess Lum gets engaged to Ataru Morobushi, the universe's most lecherous man. Ranma creator Rumiko Takahashi's breakthrough hit.
Key the Metal Idol - Robot-girl Key is told by her dying builder that she can become human only if she can get 30,000 people to love her. A science-fiction Pinocchio story. Great program for fans of Lain.
Irresponsible Captain Tylor - During an intersteller war, a bumbling idiot is made captain of a space destroyer. But, is he really all that stupid...
RecordTV is doomed by reason of their copyright violations.
Why?
Because the owners of the copyrighted material have licensed it for broadcast on various TV stations for the purpose of home viewing only. Yes, you can record a program. But that does not give you the license to rebroadcast that program other than for your personal use.
Even Cable TV providers cannot carry a broadcast station for free. Under the new FCC rules, Cable TV providers must pay local TV broadcasters for the right to carry their signal to Cable subscribers' homes.
So, what this all boils down to is that RecordTV et al is republishing copyright-protected material without a license.
And, they are doing it for profit, at least to the extent that they are receiving some advertising dollars from their ad-boxes.
This makes their acts of copyright violation a U.S. Grade A Authentic Federal Crime.
Not that it'll go that far. I suppose that they will cave under the threat of lawsuit.
IANAL. I am, however, a law student studying for the California Bar (not that this makes me an expert or anything).
This reminds me of a Really REALLY bad idea I had in high school:
Take the classic Apple ][ game, "Lemonade Stand", which was written in Applesoft Basic, and convert it into "Holocaust: The Game of Genocide", by taking the economic model of the game (lemons, sugar, the price of lemonade, etc) and twisting it into a more ghastly varient.
I had actually gotten as far as programming a low-res animation sequence of a room filling with blood piped in from above.
Then, I came to my senses and dropped the project for one involving the creation of characters for the RuneQuest RPG.
With respect to eBay suing the Church of Scientology for malicious prosecution, they do not necessarily have a good case. In fact, right now, they do not have a case. Here is the chain of events that would have to happen prior to eBay being awarded damages against the Scientologists: 1. eBay tells the Church to bug off (instead of caving in like they did). 2. The Church sues eBay. They'll sue not just under the DCMA, but also anything else that they can thing of, such as the aformentioned UTICA (which, granted, I'm not familar with at all), the common law tort of conversion (alleging some sort of continued ownership interest in the object), and whatever else their attorneys can make up. 3. The Church goes down in flames, and their case is dismissed by the judge at the demurrer stage, which means the judge would determine that even if all of the facts alleged by the Church were true, the Church still wouldn't have a case. 4. Then, eBay sues the Church for malicious prosecution. If eBay can prove that the Church didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of a case, then they can win. Ordinarily, the damages for malicious prosecution amount to attorney fees and costs (essentially everything shelled out by eBay defending themselves). Punitive damages are awardable, but only if the court finds that the actions of the Churce were oppressive, willful, wanton, etc. While malicious prosection is certainly malicious enough, punitive damages are not required to be awarded here. eBay winning the lawsuit filed by the Church after a trial is probably enough of a showing that the Church had a good enough case that they're acts were not a malicious abuse of legal process. For eBay to prevail in their malicious prosecution cause of action, the court would have to dismiss the Church's case, either at the demurrer stage, or after the church presents their case at trial. David A. Brown Now I get to go back to studying for the Bar Exam.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that the Green Party, instead of being blamed for losing Gore the election, should be complaining to it's members about how their last minute compromise of conscience resulted in the Green Party's loss of federal matching funds in 2004, and still didn't make a difference in the election.
Interestingly enough, Evangelion was shown in it's full uncut subtitled glory on KTEH-54 in San Jose, a few months back, weekly on Sunday nights.
Just what we need, another Sailor Senshi.
Trans-Neptunian Object EB173 Planet Power, MAKE UP!
I recall Douglas Adams's theory of the Shoe Event Horizon. As civilization progresses, a greater portion of our gross national product is dedicated to the design, production, marketing, and distribution of shoes. Eventually society collapses, after the planet's surface is covered with the remnants of cheap Italian high heels.
Essentially, the Good Judge has found a technical problem - those darn incriminating e-mails that Ollie North deleted to cover his hiney over Iran Contra were in fact still in the system. Instead of urging a technical solution "Delete means Delete", he urges a legal solution that is entirely outside of the traditions of the law.
He's not really urging a statute of limitations on e-mail. Rather, it seems he is proposing that e-mail messages that are greater than 6 months old should not be used as evidence. I think this is wrong.
It's one thing to parade the horribles such as the flamebait message you wrote years ago coming back to haunt you when you apply for a job at Microsoft's Linux division 8 years from now, but what about this: Even today, emails are being used as evidence prove the existance of contracts - I believe that proposed changes to the Uniform Commerical Code deal with this sort of thing. If you can say that the slander you wrote six months ago shouldn't be considered in court, then why should they admit as evidence the e-mail from Bill Gates offering you shares for coming over to the dark side?
Also, why should the law ignore old e-mails when it embraces old letters? Heck, under the "ancient documents" rule, old documents can be admitted to evidence over hearsay objections.
If the judge wants to protect us from our old messages, then our legislatures to pass laws to compel OS and application publishers to provide a secure delete function.
Borrowed from: http://www.dell.com/us/en/dhs/topics/linux_linuxho me.htm
Thinking about Linux and how it will play in your high-tech environment?
You're not alone. Lots of people are looking into Linux as a low cost, stable Operating System alternative. Linux is becoming an important part of the Internet Infrastructure with an impressive 33% of web hosting servers running Linux - and that number is growing. Linux is also widely deployed on file and print, e-mail and application servers and on workstations for application development.
Dell and Red Hat have teamed up to deliver the most comprehensive menu of Linux based products, services and solution stacks available.
Announcing the Dell and Red Hat One Source Alliance
Dell and Red Hat have combined forces to form the One Source Alliance, a unique relationship that unites Red Hat's leadership in the Open Source market with Dell's commitment to meeting the demand for Linux from the edge of the Internet to the heart of the Enterprise. Our goal is to speed the commercial acceptance and adoption of Linux and to provide one source for Linux solutions.
The One Source Alliance includes collaborative development of products, co-development and delivery of global service offerings, and solutions that are enterprise-ready, Red Hat certified and offer the best customer experience. Together, we are also giving back to the community by developing tools and test suites that have been made open source and are readily available.
Through the Alliance, Dell and Red Hat intend to work together to promote the adoption of Linux, offer the services and solutions the community is looking for and drive future technology innovations to support the infrastructure computing needs of the Internet economy.
At the bottom of the page, Mr. Gates et. al. kindly point out that the page was last updated on November 1, 1999. Also, it's a comparison between Windows NT Server 4.0, not Windows 2000 Professional (or whatever they call it these days).
What does this mean? Nothing really, not anymore. It's stale data.
Maybe it's time for both Microsoft and the Linux community to update the page. As for Dell, it's not that hard to believe they would have said what they said about Linux - last year, before the recent Linux boom and the Microsoft verdict.
Essentially, Microsoft is asking for twice the amount of time that is normally allowed to file a written brief. When you look at it from the perspective that it's a particularly complex case, giving the parties 60 days to file an appellate brief instead of the typical 30 days is not out of the ordinary.
Of course, if the government responds quickly to the Microsoft brief, then the case can be heard sooner rather than later.
Under the circumstances, I do not feel that the government will argue against this. Microsoft's attorneys have been working on a brief for a very long time, and the government won't get to see it until it has been filed with the court. While arguably, Microsoft does not need 60 days, the government will want 60 days to respond.
Also, the idea that Microsoft is delaying the case so that George Bush can get elected and drop the whole matter isn't really critical here. Under ordinary civil procedure rules, the case would not be heard before the appellate court until after the election anyway, and any decision, either for or against Microsoft, is going to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the final analysis - I just do not see that this story is indicative of a Secret Microsoft Plot to Rule the World.
Now Microsoft Bob on the other hand - that was just plain evil.
Others have pointed out that judicial ethics require the avoidance of an appearance of impropriety. They claim that because Rehnquist's son is working for a law firm representing Microsoft in an entirely unrelated matter, Rehnquist himself is somehow tainted.
However, neither Rehnquist nor his son are financially interested in the case. If Rehnquist owned stock in Microsoft, then he should recuse himself, because his fortunes may be riding on the decision the Supreme Court would have to make. But this is not the case here. The most either of them stand to gain by a biased decision towards Microsoft is the continued employment of Rehnquist the Younger - and this is already probably going to be happening already. Rehnquist the Younger does not need Microsoft to stay afloat to maintain his position in the law firm where he works.
The reasoning behind the alleged appearance of impropriety is thus tenuous at best. It is equivalent to recusing yourself from a business decision to buy Apple G4's for the office because your brother just happens to work for Apple as an accountant.
Of course, if Rehnquist's son were on the board of directors of Microsoft, or perhaps even just a staff attorney directly on the Microsoft payroll, it would be another matter.
A thought.
A friend of mine runs a small business in Japan called japanime.com. His company will purchase Japanese anime items on request. If you ask them nicely enough, they may be willing to look for clear plastic palm buttons...
I'm not sure Who this Doctor is, but his dog runs on Linux.
The UN's elite UNIT taskforce will maintain and operate the new telescope. Ordinarily, I would be wary of a military organization operating a science project, but they apparantly have the assistance of a Doctor with experience in that sort of thing.
There's something that I had forgotten to add to this. With respect to the idea that "domain names are not property", the court's decision was based on the common law concept that the tort of conversion applies only to chattel, which has been defined by case law to consist only of "tangible personal property". What's that? If you can put it into a box (not a virtual box) and ship it somewhere, then it's tangible.
Please note that while the court did dismiss the claim on the basis that the tort of conversion did not apply, the court did allow the plaintiff original registrants of sex.com to amend their complaint to include a claim for unfair business practices. The result will be the same - ultimately the court will order the defendant to transfer the rights to sex.com back to the original owner. It is unfair to say that there is no remedy for the "theft" of a domain name, even if the law may decide that a domain name is intangible and cannot be stolen (a trait shared by trademarks and copyrights).
Consider this as a matter of programming syntax. The lawyer for the plaintiff used the wrong function in crafting his program, and the system crashed. Now, he gets to debug his program and run it again. This time it should work.
Enough with the lawyer bashing already. The article sounds like a load of whiny tripe. Let's look seriously at the alleged gross injustices perpetrated by our legal system in the service of corporate lackeys identified within the article:
1. "Domain names aren't property and therefore cannot be stolen"
Why is this inherently unjust? We do not treat the electromagnetic spectrum as the sort of Oklahoma land rush that Internet domain names became. Why should people who can type fast enough to register "mtv.com" hold a trademarked business name hostage? Trademark protection has been around a lot longer than the Internet.
This issue is, of course, subject to debate. There are various interests involved here, protection of trademarks vs. the winners of the Internet Land Rush is just one. However, in the great scheme of things, this issue is being, and should be, resolved by the traditional methods of resolving conflicting rights: the Law and the political process. Nobody is going to take slashdot's or yahoo's or amazon.com's domain name away from them. But why should the law protect some schmo who manages to register abcnewsfan.com? Let him build his own trademark instead of cashing in on someone else's.
2. The ability to decrypt a DVD cooresponds directly with the intent to pirate it.
While it is very understandable that Linux should have DVD drivers just like other operating systems, should these drivers have been authored to allow users to download digitally perfect DVD movies onto their hard drives, with the potential for illegal distribution? That's really the big issue with DeCSS. If DeCSS were simply a DVD driver for Linux nobody in the industry would have cared. However, DeCSS + DVD-RAM = the potential for digitally perfect copies of everything released on DVD. Yes, I know you cannot (yet) put as much data on a DVD-RAM as a publisher can on a DVD, but the potential is out there. Release a Linux DVD driver that does not allow you to copy a DVD and you won't be accused of piracy.
3. Linking to a program declared illegal is itself illegal.
So we should be able to offer links to illegally duplicated software or even child pornography stored on someone else's server? While the actual present issue is that people shouldn't get sued for linking to DeCSS, an absolute right to link to any matter, legal or illegal, is not in the best interests of society.
I am not technically savvy, at least not nearly as much as the typical slashdot member. I don't even use Linux. (If I am technically incorrect with regard to DeCSS I apologize for my ignorance in advance.) But, I think the point that the author does not understand is that just because something is technically feasible doesn't mean that we should allow it. I am not in favor of technology run amuck in just the same way that I am not in favor of science run amuck. Also, the rights of others, even detestible mega-corporations, have to be respected if we expect our own rights to be respected. The system will stomp on those who attempt to work outside of it. To those who support information freedom, look to the civil rights movement and how long that took to get any real results (and it's not over yet). Then, write your checks to EFF. But enough with the whining already.
Apparently Swedish Palm developer and University of Gävle lecturer Aaron Ardiri, one of the original authors of Liberty, was the one who wrote the Palm Trojan, disguised as a Liberty crack. What does Mr. Ethetton think about that?
Of course, I'd be really impressed if the trojan could upload to Reuters false press releases concerning Microsoft earnings while at the same time automatically selling Microsoft short on my eTrade account.
Of course, there are other Apple innovations, such as extreme hyperbole in advertising ("twice as fast as the fastest [insert name of processor]"), a grand tradition of crappy keyboards, hockey-puck mice (with only one button), missing floppy drives, and an all-encompassing goal of making damn sure that the software and peripherals that you want to move from your old Apple to your new Apple just won't work any longer.
This evening, friends and I went to Fry's in Sacramento. My friend Sue bought herself a new Apple notebook because her old Apple notebook couldn't access the Internet any longer because her various i/o drivers all managed to conflict with one another creating a complete inability to go on line despite uninstalling and reinstalling all the software - obviously a triumph of Apple's superior crash-free and easy to use user environment. She also has to find another way of hotsyncing her Palm to her notebook, because Mr. Jobs & Co. kindly removed the extraneous serial port that no one was really using anyway. And she's just one of "the rest of us" average users. I thought that the idea of the computer for the rest of us was to support the needs of the consumer, rather than force the consumer to change the way they work whenever the official style changes.
Apple has to defend their innovations in style, because once you strip the style to get to the substance beneath, you can't find anything all that more creative and reliable than Windows 98.
Urusei Yatsura - Jealous space-oni Princess Lum gets engaged to Ataru Morobushi, the universe's most lecherous man. Ranma creator Rumiko Takahashi's breakthrough hit.
Key the Metal Idol - Robot-girl Key is told by her dying builder that she can become human only if she can get 30,000 people to love her. A science-fiction Pinocchio story. Great program for fans of Lain.
Irresponsible Captain Tylor - During an intersteller war, a bumbling idiot is made captain of a space destroyer. But, is he really all that stupid...
ANYTHING by Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki.
Why?
Because the owners of the copyrighted material have licensed it for broadcast on various TV stations for the purpose of home viewing only. Yes, you can record a program. But that does not give you the license to rebroadcast that program other than for your personal use.
Even Cable TV providers cannot carry a broadcast station for free. Under the new FCC rules, Cable TV providers must pay local TV broadcasters for the right to carry their signal to Cable subscribers' homes.
So, what this all boils down to is that RecordTV et al is republishing copyright-protected material without a license.
And, they are doing it for profit, at least to the extent that they are receiving some advertising dollars from their ad-boxes.
This makes their acts of copyright violation a U.S. Grade A Authentic Federal Crime.
Not that it'll go that far. I suppose that they will cave under the threat of lawsuit.
IANAL. I am, however, a law student studying for the California Bar (not that this makes me an expert or anything).
This reminds me of a Really REALLY bad idea I had in high school:
Take the classic Apple ][ game, "Lemonade Stand", which was written in Applesoft Basic, and convert it into "Holocaust: The Game of Genocide", by taking the economic model of the game (lemons, sugar, the price of lemonade, etc) and twisting it into a more ghastly varient.
I had actually gotten as far as programming a low-res animation sequence of a room filling with blood piped in from above.
Then, I came to my senses and dropped the project for one involving the creation of characters for the RuneQuest RPG.
With respect to eBay suing the Church of Scientology for malicious prosecution, they do not necessarily have a good case. In fact, right now, they do not have a case. Here is the chain of events that would have to happen prior to eBay being awarded damages against the Scientologists: 1. eBay tells the Church to bug off (instead of caving in like they did). 2. The Church sues eBay. They'll sue not just under the DCMA, but also anything else that they can thing of, such as the aformentioned UTICA (which, granted, I'm not familar with at all), the common law tort of conversion (alleging some sort of continued ownership interest in the object), and whatever else their attorneys can make up. 3. The Church goes down in flames, and their case is dismissed by the judge at the demurrer stage, which means the judge would determine that even if all of the facts alleged by the Church were true, the Church still wouldn't have a case. 4. Then, eBay sues the Church for malicious prosecution. If eBay can prove that the Church didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of a case, then they can win. Ordinarily, the damages for malicious prosecution amount to attorney fees and costs (essentially everything shelled out by eBay defending themselves). Punitive damages are awardable, but only if the court finds that the actions of the Churce were oppressive, willful, wanton, etc. While malicious prosection is certainly malicious enough, punitive damages are not required to be awarded here. eBay winning the lawsuit filed by the Church after a trial is probably enough of a showing that the Church had a good enough case that they're acts were not a malicious abuse of legal process. For eBay to prevail in their malicious prosecution cause of action, the court would have to dismiss the Church's case, either at the demurrer stage, or after the church presents their case at trial. David A. Brown Now I get to go back to studying for the Bar Exam.
Actually, it's one of five women. Two of the seven women were lesbians.