And that wouldn't have any legal standing as a URL can be changed. If you're not signing a paper copy of it in the store, it doesn't have much in the way of binding. After all, how else can they prove that you accepted the EULA, or just bought the software without seeing the EULA, expecting standard copyright rules?
The terms of the contract (more or less): 1. If you want to use the software, you have to agree to the EULA. 2. If you do NOT agree to this EULA, return to point of purchase for a refund.
There are suitability for use laws in most states, that basically say that if you purchase something for some task, and it proves to be unsuitable due to a hidden defect, you may return it for a refund or exchange. The old thirty-day thing. Software tends to be more identical than most things, so if one is a lemon, chances are they'll all be lemons.
I had this happen to me, the entire run of a game was defective in the copy protection department(IE the software thought the original was a copy). I ended up exchanging all copies of the game as defective. It went quicker once a manager with a clue looked at the sheet from the manufacturer's website showing the bad pressing...
I agree. I've seen a couple of EULA's that say that if you don't agree with it, to return it to the place of purchase for a refund. This struck me as odd, seeing as how the store had a "no refund" policy on software.
Sounded like lawsuit territory. If I had chosen not to accept the EULA, and the store refused my return, I probably would have had the right to sue to see if: 1. The store has to accept the return 2. The company that produced the software has to refund me 3. The EULA is invalid, so it falls back to copyright law, and I'm free to ignore the provision that pissed me off. 4. I'm screwed (to be honest, I don't think this would be very likely. If the store is selling licenses to a product with an agreement that says "return me if you don't agree" that I can't reasonably read before purchase, well, they have to accept returns.
I remember one time when some people were trying to sell me a filtration system. The only problem was that I prefered tap water every time. And I could tell the tap water.
You side with a criminal because the lock on some window wasn't good enough to stop a crowbar forced entry?
What we're objecting to is the idea that part of the "damages" this thief is being charged with would be the installation of bars in the windows afterwords.
Sure, charge him for actual damages, such as cleanup & verification. But charging him for patching the holes?
If you make a sentence for say, a welder, that includes "no welding", you've just taken away his most salable job skill. This increases the odds that he'll be unemployed, and the chance that the job he will be able to get is a McJob. This should be and probably was taken into account by the judge when he did the sentencing.
I'm not saying that it's an unjust sentence, but then again, I tend to think that sentences should be harsh.
Yeah, but the amount of power it takes to decode them at least limits the amount of posts it allows.
The question becomes one of spam. Whether it's in your email box, or the comments of your blog, it's the same.
You want it to be easy to filter out the spam and still make it easy for legitimate readers to make comments.
Looking at the slashdot system, a mail-verified registration system seems to be mostly sufficient.
On my blog the spambot was putting porn weblinks into the webfield, and a generic 'dude that's cool' or 'I want to know more' type of text in the comment field.
However, mine was easy, it was all coming from one subnet, so I blocked that.
You mean like Jessica Parker (or whatever her name was), who when captured was taken to a local hospital by Iraqi soldiers?
That's a key word, Iraqi Soldiers. We're no longer fighting Iraqi Soldiers. They spent some time in POW camps(often eating better food than what they had before). Except for specific individuals, they've pretty much been released.
I have some names for you: Nicholas Berg, Kim Sun-il, Paul M. Johnson Jr., Eugene Armstrong.
As for the POW's being held, I meant three more years. As in they've already been held for three years.
Oh please. "Well, they've done worse" - that's your justification? Especially when you have no idea whether the captive to hand has any relation to those who "have done worse". Further, this is the exact same argument the extremists on the *other* side use when they chop the head off some US civilian they've captured "Well, the US does the same to us". Nice little vicious circle this type of moral leadership brings one into.
Please, when the USA starts chopping off heads in Gitmo, and the terrorists start speaking harshly at their prisoners, we'll talk again.
Oh NB: Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and other abuses - I dont really blame US soldiers (though, they should have refused to do these things), I blame your current administration.
Actually, I blame Abu Graib on the soldiers who commited the offenses. Remember: Court Martials are proceeding.
On the whole, our treatment of the prisoners at gitmo are very good. I will agree with you that tribunals should have been conducted long ago, even if only for simply checking to see if we have enough to hold them for longer. I also think that they should of been allowed communication with the outside world.
If it has anything useful, use the thrusters to put it into a orbit.
One of the neat ideas I've read about involved putting an asteroid on a repeating earth-mars course. You put a base on the asteroid, using the asteriod as shielding. You then use smaller vessels as a shuttle, so you don't have to accelerate that much mass. Use hydroponics and such to keep the supplies required as low as possible.
If you look at most of the genocides and conflicts in history, the parties involved (perpetrators and victims) have mostly been from ethnicly different groups.
There's nothing wrong with being diverse, as long as you realize that you have to have at least some things in common in order to cooperate. Different views lead to conflict. Normally this is good, when it's a matter of idea vs. idea(may the best idea win). But when it gets down to the body vs. body level, watch out.
local warlords take all the food, the people end up no better off...
Actually, it was worse than that. There was at least one incident where the warlords used the donated food to feed themselves and their soldiers while they killed their enemies... Who happened to be the farmers. So in this case, our food donations actually made the situation worse.
The colonization of other worlds is a hedge against this. Take out the homeworld, and human civilization, technology, and culture survives. That I feel is more important than "just" humanity itself surviving as a species.
I remember a book that had an alien species that every so often knocked itself back to the stone age. They did it often enough that they built lots of "museums" containing lessons to teach from chipping stone all the way back up to the nuclear age. The doors just got progressivly harder to open. I also think that the stone tool places were more frequent than the higher up ones. IE stone tool skillshop within a few miles, might have to go a couple hundred for a nuclear one. They built lots of them because they knew most would be destroyed in the fighting.
It sounds like a good start for us. Build basic skills shops all over the earth, and stick the really good stuff on the moon. You wouldn't necessarily want them manned, as manned=target.
Personally, I think that it was subtle to the point of not being anwhere in the author's mind.
He was listing "natural" population controls. Starvation, Disease, Violence, non-reproducing members. He might as well say that the monastic orders are an ancient form birth control.
I still stand by my belief that disabling GPS is more likely to cause problems for the legitimate users of the system than it is to discourage a terrorist attack. There are just too many other ways one can accurately locate a given target, and as you mention with the mortars, one doesn't have to even resort to a high-tech means of attack.
And I agree with you. The terrorists have shown that they prefer soft targets, and all you have to do to find a soft target in america is to look around. I'm not even sure they want to kill the president. They'd rather kill civilians.
And if you look at the terrorist's methods, they often go for low-tech but clever solutions rather than high tech. Hooking a bomb up to a pager/cell phone is clever, but not particularly 'high tech', in that you're often just hooking up some wires to the ringer. A stolen truck filled with explosives and a suicidal driver can do more damage more cheaply than trying to put together a cruise missile. Put in some more explosives in to blow the barriers out of the way just before the truck gets there and you can take the building out almost the same way as Oklahoma city.
Living free also means living with risk, and the American public would do well to understand that. There's simply no way the government can guarantee peoples' safety, even with the most Draconian measures in place.
I definitely agree. "People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both"
If you think, as a military man, that these people in "Gitmo" have been given that then woe betide you or your fellow soldiers when it happens to them. What kind of precedent do you think this sets for US soldiers who are captured in future conflicts? "Ah but the people in Gitmo are terrorists" doesnt cut it, cause many of them have , after several years of close confinement, interrogation, all without any kind of judicial supervision (either military or civilian) been released back to afghanistan or to the UK because they were indeed simply civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Precisely the kind of injustice the Geneva Conventions, if followed, were designed to protect against.
I'd love to be treated like we treat prisoners at Gitmo. As it is, I know there is a 95% chance I'll end up with my head sawed off with a knife if I'm captured by those we're currently in conflict with. It's a sad state, but I can't remember a time when we fought an enemy who paid more than lip service to the conventions.
As for the people we've released, it takes time to decide if you have a case or not. If you were a German soldier captured near the beginning of WWII, you'd still have three more years before you'd be returned home. I've also read that a number of them have been spotted/caught running with terrorist organizations after their release, in some theater (not necessarily american, some have been found fighting the russians).
Like has been said, the geneva conventions are a poor fit for terrorists. We aren't holding many Iraqis in Gitmo. We're holding people foreign to the area of conflict there. While I object to the no communication part(how hard would it be to let them write letters home?), you are allowed to question POW's. The methods do push the line, but are also not as severe as are commonly practiced in the surrounding areas. Also, given the nebulous "War on Terror", the "Geneva Conventions" are unclear on when we're supposed to release them.
I'll also restate that my instructions are to treat them as POW's, speed them to the rear to the designated authority. I shouldn't have them more than a few hours. I'm not going to question them, abuse them, or anything.
Its sad you think this is justifiable. These conventions protect you as much as anyone else. Your employer, by undermining them, endangers you, the ordinary soldier, almost as much as anyone else. But you've been brainwashed to think "ah but they're terrorists, my government says so, so its ok". Sad..
We're fighting an enemy who ignores and attempts to use the convention to their own advantage. We're fighting an enemy who executes their prisoners(mostly civilians!) for propaganda. I have no doubt that some iffy things are happening in Guantanamo Bay. However, I have to ask myself: By doing these things, is the government making me and my country safer from the thugs with no regard for the conventions?
When I consider the issue carefully, I draw a distinction between Insurgents and Terrorists. We've cut deals with insurgents, but the ones that actually leave the country are the most likely to be terrorists.
It makes it difficult for the EU to justify funding Galileo as long as they're on good terms with the USA, and the USA is promising not to turn it off over them unless there is serious need(or they ask). The ability to selectivly degrade the public service over limited areas means that the EU's shipping & stuff isn't "being held hostage". At least, when you compare the risk of the USA shutting off the system to the cost of putting up a competing network.
Add in that the USA pretty much said "If you put it up, we'll deploy the capacity to jam or destroy it" and the EU doesn't even get to say "you'll have to cooperate with us to have us turn our system off".
I'd say the conversation went like this: Europe: Why should we let you turn off our system? USA: Because otherwise we'll use one of these if we have to. Europe: Okay, we'll turn it off if you say so. USA:Thanks.
Exactly, You look at modern counter-battery artillery, they have the ability to calculate an incoming shell's ballistics, figure out where it came from, come up with a firing solution and fire all in the space of a few minutes (2-5). This is the reason something like 99% of US artillery is self propelled. Shoot and scoot.
On the other hand, many of the smaller morters are man-portable, so while you might use a small computer to set up the initials, the starting settings and wind adjustment are somewhat variable, you might not have time to ensure perfectly flat base placement and that's what makes a ranging shot necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
Now the 6 or 8 grocery stores
Um, if you have 6 or 8 grocery stores I wouldn't call it a "small community". I've lived in a small community. It had one, small, grocery store.
With 6 to 8, you're getting into large town/small city territory.
Hmm... I wonder what would happen if that website was hacked and had a few interesting... items were added to the EULA.
I especially hate the "can be updated any time without notification or approval" clauses.
And that wouldn't have any legal standing as a URL can be changed. If you're not signing a paper copy of it in the store, it doesn't have much in the way of binding. After all, how else can they prove that you accepted the EULA, or just bought the software without seeing the EULA, expecting standard copyright rules?
The terms of the contract (more or less):
1. If you want to use the software, you have to agree to the EULA.
2. If you do NOT agree to this EULA, return to point of purchase for a refund.
There are suitability for use laws in most states, that basically say that if you purchase something for some task, and it proves to be unsuitable due to a hidden defect, you may return it for a refund or exchange. The old thirty-day thing. Software tends to be more identical than most things, so if one is a lemon, chances are they'll all be lemons.
return defective, as in buggy, software
I had this happen to me, the entire run of a game was defective in the copy protection department(IE the software thought the original was a copy). I ended up exchanging all copies of the game as defective. It went quicker once a manager with a clue looked at the sheet from the manufacturer's website showing the bad pressing...
Ah, I remember when I had more time than money...
I agree. I've seen a couple of EULA's that say that if you don't agree with it, to return it to the place of purchase for a refund. This struck me as odd, seeing as how the store had a "no refund" policy on software.
Sounded like lawsuit territory. If I had chosen not to accept the EULA, and the store refused my return, I probably would have had the right to sue to see if:
1. The store has to accept the return
2. The company that produced the software has to refund me
3. The EULA is invalid, so it falls back to copyright law, and I'm free to ignore the provision that pissed me off.
4. I'm screwed (to be honest, I don't think this would be very likely. If the store is selling licenses to a product with an agreement that says "return me if you don't agree" that I can't reasonably read before purchase, well, they have to accept returns.
Actually, as a married couple, your assets are considered each other's. Therefore your nuts are her nuts that she'd be giving away. ;)
How does having a projector properly mounted to the ceiling and a screen against a wall take up any more space than a LCD or equivalent?
That's the nice thing about a projector, you can mount it just about anywhere.
I remember one time when some people were trying to sell me a filtration system. The only problem was that I prefered tap water every time. And I could tell the tap water.
Give me my mineral suppliments!
You side with a criminal because the lock on some window wasn't good enough to stop a crowbar forced entry?
What we're objecting to is the idea that part of the "damages" this thief is being charged with would be the installation of bars in the windows afterwords.
Sure, charge him for actual damages, such as cleanup & verification. But charging him for patching the holes?
If you make a sentence for say, a welder, that includes "no welding", you've just taken away his most salable job skill. This increases the odds that he'll be unemployed, and the chance that the job he will be able to get is a McJob. This should be and probably was taken into account by the judge when he did the sentencing.
I'm not saying that it's an unjust sentence, but then again, I tend to think that sentences should be harsh.
Yeah, but the amount of power it takes to decode them at least limits the amount of posts it allows.
The question becomes one of spam. Whether it's in your email box, or the comments of your blog, it's the same.
You want it to be easy to filter out the spam and still make it easy for legitimate readers to make comments.
Looking at the slashdot system, a mail-verified registration system seems to be mostly sufficient.
On my blog the spambot was putting porn weblinks into the webfield, and a generic 'dude that's cool' or 'I want to know more' type of text in the comment field.
However, mine was easy, it was all coming from one subnet, so I blocked that.
As it happens, I'm watching the complete first season of star trek right now. I didn't feel it necessary.
And fund NASA? If you check my past posting history, you'll find that I'm pretty much for the total reform of NASA.
You mean like Jessica Parker (or whatever her name was), who when captured was taken to a local hospital by Iraqi soldiers?
That's a key word, Iraqi Soldiers. We're no longer fighting Iraqi Soldiers. They spent some time in POW camps(often eating better food than what they had before). Except for specific individuals, they've pretty much been released.
I have some names for you: Nicholas Berg, Kim Sun-il, Paul M. Johnson Jr., Eugene Armstrong.
As for the POW's being held, I meant three more years. As in they've already been held for three years.
Oh please. "Well, they've done worse" - that's your justification? Especially when you have no idea whether the captive to hand has any relation to those who "have done worse". Further, this is the exact same argument the extremists on the *other* side use when they chop the head off some US civilian they've captured "Well, the US does the same to us". Nice little vicious circle this type of moral leadership brings one into.
Please, when the USA starts chopping off heads in Gitmo, and the terrorists start speaking harshly at their prisoners, we'll talk again.
Oh NB: Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and other abuses - I dont really blame US soldiers (though, they should have refused to do these things), I blame your current administration.
Actually, I blame Abu Graib on the soldiers who commited the offenses. Remember: Court Martials are proceeding.
On the whole, our treatment of the prisoners at gitmo are very good. I will agree with you that tribunals should have been conducted long ago, even if only for simply checking to see if we have enough to hold them for longer. I also think that they should of been allowed communication with the outside world.
If it has anything useful, use the thrusters to put it into a orbit.
One of the neat ideas I've read about involved putting an asteroid on a repeating earth-mars course. You put a base on the asteroid, using the asteriod as shielding. You then use smaller vessels as a shuttle, so you don't have to accelerate that much mass. Use hydroponics and such to keep the supplies required as low as possible.
Good insight.
If you look at most of the genocides and conflicts in history, the parties involved (perpetrators and victims) have mostly been from ethnicly different groups.
There's nothing wrong with being diverse, as long as you realize that you have to have at least some things in common in order to cooperate. Different views lead to conflict. Normally this is good, when it's a matter of idea vs. idea(may the best idea win). But when it gets down to the body vs. body level, watch out.
local warlords take all the food, the people end up no better off...
Actually, it was worse than that. There was at least one incident where the warlords used the donated food to feed themselves and their soldiers while they killed their enemies... Who happened to be the farmers. So in this case, our food donations actually made the situation worse.
The colonization of other worlds is a hedge against this. Take out the homeworld, and human civilization, technology, and culture survives. That I feel is more important than "just" humanity itself surviving as a species.
I remember a book that had an alien species that every so often knocked itself back to the stone age. They did it often enough that they built lots of "museums" containing lessons to teach from chipping stone all the way back up to the nuclear age. The doors just got progressivly harder to open. I also think that the stone tool places were more frequent than the higher up ones. IE stone tool skillshop within a few miles, might have to go a couple hundred for a nuclear one. They built lots of them because they knew most would be destroyed in the fighting.
It sounds like a good start for us. Build basic skills shops all over the earth, and stick the really good stuff on the moon. You wouldn't necessarily want them manned, as manned=target.
Personally, I think that it was subtle to the point of not being anwhere in the author's mind.
He was listing "natural" population controls. Starvation, Disease, Violence, non-reproducing members. He might as well say that the monastic orders are an ancient form birth control.
I still stand by my belief that disabling GPS is more likely to cause problems for the legitimate users of the system than it is to discourage a terrorist attack. There are just too many other ways one can accurately locate a given target, and as you mention with the mortars, one doesn't have to even resort to a high-tech means of attack.
And I agree with you. The terrorists have shown that they prefer soft targets, and all you have to do to find a soft target in america is to look around. I'm not even sure they want to kill the president. They'd rather kill civilians.
And if you look at the terrorist's methods, they often go for low-tech but clever solutions rather than high tech. Hooking a bomb up to a pager/cell phone is clever, but not particularly 'high tech', in that you're often just hooking up some wires to the ringer. A stolen truck filled with explosives and a suicidal driver can do more damage more cheaply than trying to put together a cruise missile. Put in some more explosives in to blow the barriers out of the way just before the truck gets there and you can take the building out almost the same way as Oklahoma city.
Living free also means living with risk, and the American public would do well to understand that. There's simply no way the government can guarantee peoples' safety, even with the most Draconian measures in place.
I definitely agree. "People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both"
I'd love to be treated like we treat prisoners at Gitmo. As it is, I know there is a 95% chance I'll end up with my head sawed off with a knife if I'm captured by those we're currently in conflict with. It's a sad state, but I can't remember a time when we fought an enemy who paid more than lip service to the conventions.
As for the people we've released, it takes time to decide if you have a case or not. If you were a German soldier captured near the beginning of WWII, you'd still have three more years before you'd be returned home. I've also read that a number of them have been spotted/caught running with terrorist organizations after their release, in some theater (not necessarily american, some have been found fighting the russians).
Like has been said, the geneva conventions are a poor fit for terrorists. We aren't holding many Iraqis in Gitmo. We're holding people foreign to the area of conflict there. While I object to the no communication part(how hard would it be to let them write letters home?), you are allowed to question POW's. The methods do push the line, but are also not as severe as are commonly practiced in the surrounding areas. Also, given the nebulous "War on Terror", the "Geneva Conventions" are unclear on when we're supposed to release them.
I'll also restate that my instructions are to treat them as POW's, speed them to the rear to the designated authority. I shouldn't have them more than a few hours. I'm not going to question them, abuse them, or anything.
We're fighting an enemy who ignores and attempts to use the convention to their own advantage. We're fighting an enemy who executes their prisoners(mostly civilians!) for propaganda. I have no doubt that some iffy things are happening in Guantanamo Bay. However, I have to ask myself: By doing these things, is the government making me and my country safer from the thugs with no regard for the conventions?
When I consider the issue carefully, I draw a distinction between Insurgents and Terrorists. We've cut deals with insurgents, but the ones that actually leave the country are the most likely to be terrorists.
and "good terms" is a relative measure...
We might be quarreling right now, but it's not like the EU is kicking us out of our military bases stationed there.
It makes it difficult for the EU to justify funding Galileo as long as they're on good terms with the USA, and the USA is promising not to turn it off over them unless there is serious need(or they ask). The ability to selectivly degrade the public service over limited areas means that the EU's shipping & stuff isn't "being held hostage". At least, when you compare the risk of the USA shutting off the system to the cost of putting up a competing network.
Add in that the USA pretty much said "If you put it up, we'll deploy the capacity to jam or destroy it" and the EU doesn't even get to say "you'll have to cooperate with us to have us turn our system off".
I'd say the conversation went like this:
Europe: Why should we let you turn off our system?
USA: Because otherwise we'll use one of these if we have to.
Europe: Okay, we'll turn it off if you say so.
USA:Thanks.
Exactly,
You look at modern counter-battery artillery, they have the ability to calculate an incoming shell's ballistics, figure out where it came from, come up with a firing solution and fire all in the space of a few minutes (2-5). This is the reason something like 99% of US artillery is self propelled. Shoot and scoot.
On the other hand, many of the smaller morters are man-portable, so while you might use a small computer to set up the initials, the starting settings and wind adjustment are somewhat variable, you might not have time to ensure perfectly flat base placement and that's what makes a ranging shot necessary.