Now now. Yes, there are a few secondary authors on a few of the publications (ones which make less sweeing claims). Pane Doktore Durakovic is the lead author on all of them and the only author on most. Clearly the organization would not exist without him.
I do not disagree with their aims, I do not disagree that there is a problem with DU, I do disagree with the level of sloppyness mixed with an attempt to appear "scientific."
The use of DU and its effects on military and civilian populations is clearly a problem, however, pure quackery is another thing.
The "UMRC" is one person, "Dr." Durakovic in Zagreb; if there was anyone else, this article's assertions might have a shred of believeability, but every article and publication listed begins with his name.
That the VA and the Pentagon are massive bureaucracies with little capacity or will to respond to new threats ranging from Gulf War illnessed to terrorism is obvious; look at the 9/11 commission report. We're not going to get anywhere, however, by throwing more bull on top of the pile.
The quotation you use is full of pure non-fact: it claims 240,000 (1 out of 2) Gulf War vets is "on permanent medical disability" and that the amount of DU used in Afrghanistan and Iraq is the "radiological equivalent" of 333,000 of the (approx. 30 kiloton) bombs used at Nagasaki. (For comparison, the MinuteMan and MinuteMan 2 ICBMs featured 20-30 kiloton wareheads; at the peak of the armament, the world's arsenal was under 60,000 warheads. So briefly this guys is saying that the US released more radiation that 5 or so global thermonuclear wars... right).
Dealing with reality means dealing with facts, something this guy is obviously unwilling to do.
I just loved an insurance company in Berkeley that thought a good way to market its product, was to leave a flyer that looked like the local parking tickets on my car window.
Sure got my attention, and I'll remember them forever -- its been over five years, and I'm sure I'll never buy from them.
The local main USPS branch has just put in an automated postage kiosk; next to it, there is a sign with a motion detector, every time you get near it blares out a loud advertizement for the thing.
After the fourth or fifth time accidentally setting the thing off, I wanted to slap the sign. I mean, what would you do to a human who harassed you with advertizing in this manner? I can't imagine the idiocy we'll see before anything as slick as "Minority Report."
Technically, ''viruses'' and ''worms'' are slightly different things...
[A virus is] a tiny program, and when you click on it, it will reprogram parts of your computer to do something new, like display a message. A virus cannot kick-start itself; a human needs to be fooled into clicking on it.
Thank you/. editors, for letting me know the article is "very well written by an author who clearly knows his stuff." [sic doxamatum]
Evidently in the popular media open source gets to have quotes around it, as in "so-called" "open source." At least Mr. Thompson has graduated from calling us "hackers" and now uses the slightly better term "geeks." (I suppose it is better to be called a homosexual than a fag...).
I therefore can't believe this was posted with the description "It's very well written by an author who clearly knows his stuff." Well-written, maybe, knows his stuff, not.
If something in the contract is illegal, that does not invalidate the rest of the contract (although that one section may be invalid). As far as contract writing goes, it still doesn't hurt to state that in the contract, but it isn't required.
It would hurt quite a lot not to state it:
1) Depending on the area of law, local regulation, etc., it may or may not be true if it is not stated (and may even not be true if stated). Ah technicality.
2) In the case of ambiguity, unclarity or error in a contract, the party that wrote the contract bears the burden: which means, an unclear term such as this may become non-binding for the other party, but remain binding for the party that wrote the contract; in other words, if you don't state that the invalidation of one term of the contract does not invalidate the whole, the non-contract-writing party may be able to invalidate the whole based on a part, but the contract-writing party may not.
Emphasis "may". The law is very complex on these issues, and I doubt there are many professors who know them exhaustively; I'm only summarizing what you learn in a first-year contracts course.
In any case, a click-through TOS is not a signed contract, so who cares:) ?
I guess you missed the key point of the article: that irregular spelling genuinely hinders the usefulness of services that rely on text searching.
I would hardly call that a "point," except in the language of ignorance. Anyone who has gone through a top-100 comp sci program in the last 25 years knows how to implement one of 10 root-based algorythms that would catch such variations; rule-based systems can easily accomodate your Smith/Smythe example, if tree/root won't (in fact it will, as i=y and e drops). The fact that eBay is now run by a bunch of MBAs who can't get a decent search tool is not "useful."
The idea of "correct" spellings wouldn't have been accepted by the public if they didn't find some value in it.
Public? You think the public has anything to do with this, except to have them shoved down their throats, so to speak?
I once had a friend who had the rather unique displeasure of interviewing for a junior position in the English Department of Harvard University. During this drawn-out process, one of the rituals is to sit at dinner, served by women of the lower classes of Boston, making fun of their accents and "errors of language."
That is pretension. Unfortunately, it is also such menwho largely set so-called language standards. To respond to the anonymous poster, while the US does not have a ministry of language, it does have a Modern Language Association, largely publically funded, and a system of public institutions and "public" (it would be called "private" in England, for good reason) education that enforces such standards; some of us went to 'grammar school' in the days when 'mis-spelling' was "corrected" with a good twack of the ruler.
The bit about how people whose languages don't have standardised spellings, speak with creativity, blah, blah? Now that's pretentious.
Pretentious, root, pretend.
I would refer you to George Orwell's excellent "Politics and the English Language," and suggest, perhaps, a short trip to a city such as Ghent or Bratislava.
Ironically, the internet seems to be taking us back a few centuries, to the days before English spellings were standardized by the likes of Webster and other lexicographers.
Two centuries for English as taught to 10% of the population in prep schools.
The irony and pretension of the article is its assumption of 'correct' spelling: if you read the diaries of Lewis and Clark, much less Luther's bible, you'll quickly see that the idea of 'correct' spelling is a quite new one; before the Websters here and the Brothers Grimm in Germany decided to make a "standardized" dictionary, and before a government commission in each country decided to enforce what was in that dictionary, spellings were quite variate and diverse. And no one had the academic snobbishness to say one was particularly better than the other: the written word followed the spoken, as best it could.
Such variation existed openly until the mid-20th century in most of the world, and still does in many areas (such as Flanders) and regions (such as parts of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), not to mention in non-codified languages (such as Swiss Romand). To hear people speak such a language is to return to the days when language matched experience and creativity, and to places where our very words were not shoved down our throats by the boot of government decree. The "King's English," after all, is only a matter of geography away from the Reichschancellor's Deutsch.
I personally would prefer if our children filled their brains with mathematical formulae and natural relationships, than the minutae and minuta of proper spelling. Unless they are intent on becoming botanists, of course.
The court affirmed a preliminary injunction enjoining defendant Zefer Corporation ("Zefer") from utilizing a "scrapper" tool it designed to obtain pricing information from plaintiff's website on the ground that Zefer was doing so to assist defendant Explorica, Inc. ("Explorica"), which was itself enjoined from such activity by virtue of its improper use of confidential information obtained from plaintiff to aid it in gathering this information.
This means that Zefer was prohibited from mining the data because their client (Explorica) was prohibited, because Explorica and Zefer had gained access to the data by exploiting confidential information. Which is another issue entirely from data mining...
Quite a number of people here are saying that you should use the DMCA provisions because they are available to you.
The problem with this argument is that, of course, should the DMCA every come up for legislative inquiry (as I hope it will), every vaguely reasonable use such as yours of the DMCA will be brought up to justify the DMCA.
On the other hand, if people like yourself explore standard means of response (of which people have posted many and there are more), you will display that there is no need for the DMCA.
(As an aside: how many complaints have you filed with eBay, over what time? From my experience they will suspend accounts with ongoing copyright violations -- even the use of other's copyrighted images. And you don't need to invoke DMCA to participate in VERO, which they will take more seriously).
Finally, few people have responded to more general questions about the DMCA as a tool for GPL etc software developers. My feeling is that DMCA is hardly a tool for the GPL community -- it was designed to let the big guys take immediate actions to harass others-- and I've get to hear even a concrete scenario aired here that would necessitate its use. Most violators are going to derive an income stream, and if someone is making money violating the GPL etc. terms, you can trace the money to find them, and you can track them down without the DMCA -- I bet the Canadian eBayer above would enjoy a visit from the Mounties, after all.
If you're not GPL or close -- well that's another can of worms. But do you really need to go so far as to invoke something like the DMCA to locate individual pirates? I'm more of the opinion that Kai Lee (of Kai's Power Tools, etc fame) expressed many years ago -- if someone finds a copy of your software and uses it to learn, or because they can't afford it, that's free advertizement; if they use your product regularly or to make a living, they should certainly buy a paid copy. Under such a view, what matters is a community ethic that says you should return what you get -- for instance, I've seen more than a few startups that survived on hacked copies of software and then dropped $20K on licenses when they took in income -- and such "creative licensing" is probably more valuable to most software endeavors than hunting down college kids with the DMCA. (And, of course, there are cases like time-limited shareware and authorization keys that don't necessarily fit this, but I'd want us to examine them on a case-by-case basis).
He knowingly stole trade secrets from his work and posted them online.
Actually, nowhere in the nice fluffy article does it state what confidentiality agreements he did or did not sign or what obligations he had to the firm, or what he did or didn't know and willingly do. Its hardly "espionage" if these documents (supposedly confidential, supposedly so secret that they were only printed on special paper -- but clearly not if they were being entered into a digital imaging system!...) came across his desk without any warning about their protected nature; if these had been documents about chemical waste disposal, he would be getting kudos for revealing them, a fact that exposes the highly political nature of what are called "trade secrets" -- (anyone remember when Apple threatened to sue people who distributed their dealer price lists?). The (very false and 1984 newspeakish) idea that a secret is a physical thing that can be "stolen" is quite a big stick to hand an industry that should be responsible for maintaining its own secrets via procedures and common sense (there is, at least, nothing "secret" about a price list that sits on top of the secretary's desk at 5,000 distributors).
On the other hand, if he knew what he was handling was confidential, and/or had signed agreements -- as is likely the case-- then that is an entirely different story and his lawyers have no business claiming a "childish mistake." If he knew what he was doing he should face some appropriate punishment (with consideration of his age), and the law firm probably should get some heat as well for the negligence of having a 19 year old in such a position. (Unlikely to happen as DirectTV probably doesn't want to piss off the firm, but it should happen).
But as usual, the devil of this case is in details that the reporter didn't seem to bother to inquire about, and it's rather sensational to have this case represented as governmental abuse etc. without those details
Thanks for your reply, which clarified your position for me.
Unfortunately, I've often seen negative remarks from US developers here, and (without some more information), I'm afraid I do have an assumption of disguised racism etc. given the level of pure complaining on/.
On the other hand, your experience above brings back memories of many projects from San Francisco or San Jose companies that were just plain dumped on a foreign team through a recruiter... three years ago, I could have named 10 companies that would promise foreign "outsourcing" of almost any project... and usually the company purchasing the service had no history working with the foreign entity, little idea of the details on the other end, no intent to send a project manager to the foreign site... in short, no ability to manage the project. More than a few "incomplete" messes resulted, though it was not always simply a fault of the foreign teams, but as well of the lack-of-diligence culture that had developed in "the Valley."
It's a very large topic, but any sucessful use of a foreign team requires sucessful management understanding and planning, of course. You have to know the entity you're dealing with and how to interface with them, and, to some extent, their track record and competencies and personel. Someone -- or many someones -- have to get to know them, and there have to be formal or informal metrics of performance in place. If your organization has already worked with a foreign entity, you may have developed the trust to "drop" them a project without much supervision -- but if your organization doesn't have that experience, I at least would be wary.
And there's of course a reverse to my comment that Asia has large populations: they therefore product proportionately more bad programmers and shops, as well. Did the organization know the British shop or the "outsourced" shop-- at least, by reputation? How were they judged to be competent for the job (or now judged, if that was the case)? Most American organizations have some developed relationships with British and other "trustable" sources, if only as a result of their internal personel's previous experiences and contacts. Even in California, they usually lack the same level of internal experience with with Asian companies. The result is something of a double-edged sword: either their personel ignore a resource (Asian and other foreign programmers that they are unfamiliar with) precisely because they are unfamiliar with it, OR they (or management) somewhat blindly assume that foreign resources that they are unfamiliar with will produce what they expect from more familiar sources. And often, managment that simply contracts with a foreign outsourcer without established relationships is blissfully unaware that a programming project is often incapable of being wrapped up like an order for bolts and fulfilled anywhere: success or failure often depends not only on 'good communication' or raw 'skills', but on understandings and capabilities to communicate that are built up in personal relationships and time, as well as languages and cultures.
That is, a British firm may be a better choice simply because you're capable of interfacing with them more smoothly because of culture and language (even if your personel don't have established relations with them). While I phased it a bit too harshly to get the point across, one idea I meant above may be that you simply can't communicate with many foreign programmers -- either their skill in your language or yours in theirs is too poor to have a good interface. So it is often easier and simpler to deal with a British team vs. a Chinese team. You could also often say this about a British team versus a French or German or Finnish team, as well. Much of the last 20 years of technical development is filled with this... the Finns are great with each other and some other countries, etc... and the big consulting companies have equally been dealing with such issues for years as their teams have internationalized.
I'm sorry, I'm no racist, but this is simply the way things are.
Well, you may want not to call a spade a spade, and maybe it's not racism, but it's certainly something, and it's also entirely wrong. Just because you can't communicate with someone doesn't mean they're stupid -- usually and probably the opposite, looking at your comments.
I've worked with programming groups in Lahore, outside Shanghai and in several other 'foreign' locations. Properly managed, there is nothing inferior or unprofessional about these workers -- in fact, usually just the opposite. China and India have huge populations (obviously), and (equally obviously) the best of their people congegate in the population centers looking for opportunity. In comparison with many (not all) US programmers (ever employ someone from Berkeley CS? Stanford? they think they own the world!), they are highly motivated, focused, capable, dependable, respectful and respectable. Many have significant project experience. And yes, they cost about a fifth of what you do, and are happy to make that amount. You need to face this, though I doubt you will.
On the other hand, if you're looking for very specific technical skills -- programming graphics chips, embedded systems, robotics equipment, CCD, and so forth -- that's much more rare, overall, and there's no Asian San Jose. But there are plenty of shops in Taiwan that specialize in various types of production and offer start-to-end costs that are still 1/5 of the US. And (like it or not, plenty of./ treads on this) most innovative techical development outside biotech is Pacific Rim. In some circles, there is a new Chinese motto these days: roughtly, "what more does the West have to offer the world?" Asia views itself as the future, the West as old and dying, and they may very well be right, with you wanting $100K/yr for something they're glad (and quite capable) to sell for $20K.
The bottom line: there is not enough tech education in the US (another topic that's been/.ed to death). DBAs can make $150K/yr. not because what they do is difficult -- quite the opposite -- but because it is scarce. But China, India, etc. can produce them at a dime a dozen; we're no longer in the stage of history where foreigners come to the US and learn tech and stay, but just over the hump where they come, they learn, they leave... and teach others back home. It's those others back home who are innovating, while (let's be frank) most of big fat America sits on its arse in their SUVs. Give this pattern another 30 years and you won't have the luxury of complaining about foreign workers, because they'll be complaining about you:)
Most applications for Mac OS X have to be installed in the/Applications/ directory (at least the ones that come with OS X). Otherwise, when you run an update, the updater doesn't work correctly because the install path for the applications is set to be/Applications/.
Which Apps are you referring to? True, I've seen hard-coded idiot installers, but any self-respecting Mac programmer ought to be calling the ToolBox,
I'm sure they could throw in a search for file location script in there as well, but for the most part it hasn't happened yet.
not assuming or searching or using any kind of script. Anything else (like the comment directly above) treats the MacOS as if it were WinDoze, which it absolutely, fundamentally isn't (idiot Carbon developers who come from DOS traditions nonwithstanding). MacOS is Toolbox-based, not directory-based; 'executables' are pointers within the desktop metaphor; and you should be able to move the underlying file as much as you want, without the pointer losing what it points to. If you can't follow the pointer, something's wrong.
#(@$$@)* Carbon developers.:P
has a file type and creator system (even if it's a quarter-century old), and:)
If they're really going to implement a technology to "block" cellphones, they'll probably leave it turned on all the time, even when you're at the gate.
As has been previously discussed on Slashdot (re: cell phone jammers for theatres and restaurants), this is currently illegal in the United States. You cannot employ a communications blocking technology, and I very sincerely doubt that the cell companies would consent to see that overturned anywhere, as it would open the door for every theatre, restaurant, snobby bookstore and upscale coffeeshop in America having such technology. (PS: I've never seen a problem at Soldier Field, and am sure the cell companies would be all over it if it were due to 'blocking.')
Moreover, it's important to realize that such technology does not 'block' cell phones. It interferes with the original handshake with the carrier, making it impossible for the phone to sucessfully register/log on a specific network. In practice, (unless you get it to log onto a different network), this means that the cell phone moves into 'search' mode, in which it generates a lot of high power radio activity to try and find a cell.
I don't see how the 'inflight' companies could avoid this on older, single band phones -- and in fact, I suspect this 'inflight plan' is a bunch of marketing baloney, as all phones operate on wide, preset bands that will (by the rules) interfere with onboard equipment. The companies aren't going to create a technology that suddenly converts my worldphone from 900,1800 to 2900! or wherever may be safe. And in practice, the frequency overlap is so high -- a 900 MHz device is spewing all over everything from about 775 to 1025 -- that the plan in the article is plain silly.
Finally, of course, the simple fact is that a good number of people are just plain too careless to remember to turn their phones off during flight -- and, as a result, there are plenty of phones on during flight anyway, probably all in high-radiation 'search' mode. I've done it myself on busy days, found the phone searching and turned it off, and I travel a lot with a collegue whose phone always goes off about 3 minutes before landing, when the $%(#$* thing registers and his voicemail comes in. There's no evidence that this phenomenon has ever caused an in-flight problem.
If you're a frequent flyer, you can receive incoming calls on both AirCell and Verizon, via an 800 number and access code you distribute to contacts. It's quite nice for relaying basic messages -- I set up a series of codes with all my contacts in Boston (three rings, then three rings, means the tunnel is blocked and I have to get myself from the airport...). If only we could figure a way to do morse code!
>Let's not get carried away here. There's a >difference between civil disobedience and breaking >the law because you find it inconvenient
No.
I had the honour of meeting Ms. Rosa Parks about ten years ago, in a small forum. One of the people there asked her if she had meant to make a political statement, or expected such a response, when she sat down on the bus in Birmingham.
Her response was simply, "Heaven's no. I was just tired."
All the political ideologizing around civil dissobedience, like the recent TV movie about Ms. Parks life, misses the core of 'civil disobedience.' Coming from the perspective of society, they act like such disobedience is 'civil' because it is conducted for 'higher' ends, political or otherwise.
Thoreau's explanation in "Civil Disobedience" is much more to the point: civil disobedience is not "civil" (controlled and rational) at its start -- it is the natural act of a being (think Rousseau's noble savage) whose Consciousness rebels against the corruption of civil society.
That is, it is natural disobedience to civil society, because civil society is stupid and corrupt. As in any good political drama, the act comes first, the speech afterwards.
>Civil disobedience is a statement -- the action > is secondary, a way of showing that you're >serious
Again, just the opposite. Ms. Parks sat down because she was tired and the law was stupid. It was her natural right, whatever the law, like Antigone burying her brother despite Creon's decree to let the corpse rot on the battlefield.
You bury your brother's body, whatever the law -- duty, honour, family come first. If your body is tired, you sit -- no matter the colour of your skin. For Thoreau, if your country is fighting an ridiculous war in Mexico, you don't pay your taxes -- not as a statement, but because you can't stomach the act of paying for atrocities.
First you act, first you are disobedient, then the world gets to explain. All the politics, all the statements, all the explanations come later. First Rosa Parks sat because she was tired -- and because she was disobedient -- then people and political movements got to explain (and benefit from) that act.
But to say that Rosa Parks was trying to make a statement first, and the act was secondary, domesticates her into the same kind of house-pet-who-follows-the-rules as the police who arrested her. The core was not the statement -- plenty of people said Jim Crow laws were unfair, unjust, racist -- the core was the ACT of disobedience.
And anyone who's using DeCSS, smoking pot, driving above 55 on a four-lane non-interstate highway, or otherwise violating so-called 'laws' because they are ridiculous, is likely doing the same thing. They are refusing to be obedient to society, when natural law and logic dictate against it. They are pitting their action, or, like Rosa, their tired bodies, against the unnatural law of society.
And let the cry go forth: set our data free! What greater burden could come upon the people of this world, than that every word, every piece of data, every picture and sound and thought that might be recorded, come under the control of society (government, corporation, etc.)? That the stories I write to my daughter at night, the whispers in her ear, or my pictures of my dead parents -- that all these personal and sacred moments might need the approval -- and payment -- of Microsoft or anyone else, before I could share them with anyone else. How horrible, to think of scientists or artists needing to conform to the dictates of the Sony/Microsoft/RIAA Church, before they can talk to each other -- and having their communications censored...
It is the exact same situation as the medieval Catholic Church refusing to let commoners read or interpret the "word of G-d" -- and creating a priesthood to stand in between, contolling both sides, profiting from it. (For a very good explanation of the priesthood of IBM, search Google for a copy of Ted Nelson's _Dream Machines_).
It's one thing to have IBM or Microsoft stand between corporations and their data and business processes, bilking them for money in the process. It's quite another to have all of society, all music, all writing, all video, all knowledge, controlled by such a priesthood.
The prospect is horrific. It is also entirely contradictory to the principles of a democratic, free society.
In such a political climate, anyone who uses DeCSS is a patriot, regardless of motive -- and I will remind you that the American "Founding Fathers" were also smugglers and worse who benefited quite nicely from their acts of disobedience to the British king.
> and don't >really expect to get caught.
Yes, if he doesn't expect to get caught, he's perhaps a weasly patriot -- but again, the point isn't standing up and making a statement (tea party or not). It's taking (natural) action, sharing information freely, using DVDs with Linux systems if you want to, sending a song to your wife when she's in another town -- these are things to be defended, these are the ACTS to be defended. And the question is not whether the person above, or I, or you, or anyone will make a statement and get arrested -- I remind you, that the Boston Tea Partiers ran away after the party -- but, when the time comes, when the British soldiers land, when the fasist comes knocking on your neighbor's door because of his Linux box -- will we stand up as a people, will you stand up, rush to his defense, act against the injustice? Or will we sink away, tell ourselves "at least it's not me," until we become the peasants and slaves of the new Dark Ages?
>A 1024 X 768 will require atleast 786,433 electical >contections, and wires made of metal. I expect >serious problems with metal-fatigue induced >conductor fractures, for roll-up displays.
Ever heard of nanotubes?
OK, so nanotubes can't be produced in consistent batches today -- but, assuming that's not fixed in the next couple months, there are plenty of non-brittle conductive options... the usual solution at large scale is a metal-plastic alloy, and I'm sure that the boys who came up with the screens can come up with a power solution:P
believe Metricom also built infrastructure in some additional metro areas where service was never
officially announced and no coverage maps are available,
You can find the location of every poletop Metricom ever put up as part of the bankruptcy sale asset list at the metricom sale site.
but Aerie has the rights to that equipment as well.
I'm afraid not. The poletop easements and the equipment on them were abandoned by the bankrupcy court, which is what caused Aerie to reduce their bid to $8.25M from $20M; see news coverage for details: Aerie will have to rebuild the equipment.
No, the prohibited act is keeping the copy after selling the original.
No, the photocopy is definately an "unauthorized copy," which is all the copyright act defines.
Should M$ or the gov't attempt to prosecute someone who makes such an unauthorized copy for copyright violation, the fact that they held an authorized copy at the time the copy was made, for 'backup purposes,' would be a very, very strong "fair use" defense.
To clarify here: any copy not authorized by the copyright holder is an "unauthorized copy" in the view of the Law. It is possible to claim that one is making "fair use" copies -- backup, academic purposes, etc -- that are unauthorized, but which you can't be prosecuted for.
Also, FYI, the legislation is centered on the act of copying, not in holding the copy -- no doubt M$ is scared about the fact that there's very little offense in making a "backup" copy, then failing to destroy it...
If you sold your copy of Windows NT and bought a new full retail copy of Windows XP, I don't think MS would mind. If you sold your NT
and only bought a cheaper "upgrade" to XP, then there is a problem, since you no longer have a right to run the upgrade. That's the core of
the matter.
Any exactly how is Micro$oft proposing telling the difference? Inspecting my hard drive?
Fact is, if I do this, it's the upgrade copy on my hard drive that is unauthorized. It's like photocopying a book and selling the original. Selling the original has nothing to do with the fact that I've kept an unauthorized photocopy. And trying to stop me from selling the original is a restrain of free trade, carried out (in the eBay case) by fraud on Micro$oft's part.
the seal on the box had large type stating the enclosed software operating system is sold
with the unit, cannot be seperated, and may not be subject to a refund, except for the whole unit.
Do you believe everything you read? These 'warnings' have about as much legal status as the "swim at your own risk" signs at public pools. They don't mean that you can't sue the pool owner -- they're just there to scare people who might otherwise sue.
If you received a copy of an M$ product with your computer, you can resell it under the first purchase doctrine. If there was a 'license agreement' with the computer that says you can't, well, that 'license agreement' doesn't hold under US law. And, well, as far as I can tell, nothing under the first purchase doctrine requires you to keep Micro$oft's bloody license certificates or document that you have the right to use a piece of software. Do you have to document your right to use a book that you bought?
If you want to understand this in detail, start looking a the copyright section of the EFF site.
Right of first sales gives you the right to re-sell the original, not make a photocopy for
yourself and sell the original.
Yes, but the prohibited act here is making the photocopy, not selling the original.
EULAs have not held up on court inspection and Micro$oft's policy re: eBay barely has a leg to stand on. I buy a copy of Windows, I have a right to sell it, regardless of what the EULA says.
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Now now. Yes, there are a few secondary authors on a few of the publications (ones which make less sweeing claims). Pane Doktore Durakovic is the lead author on all of them and the only author on most. Clearly the organization would not exist without him.
I do not disagree with their aims, I do not disagree that there is a problem with DU, I do disagree with the level of sloppyness mixed with an attempt to appear "scientific."
26: "Slashdot Effect" censors ProjectCensored's reporting of top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2004...
The use of DU and its effects on military and civilian populations is clearly a problem, however, pure quackery is another thing.
The "UMRC" is one person, "Dr." Durakovic in Zagreb; if there was anyone else, this article's assertions might have a shred of believeability, but every article and publication listed begins with his name.
That the VA and the Pentagon are massive bureaucracies with little capacity or will to respond to new threats ranging from Gulf War illnessed to terrorism is obvious; look at the 9/11 commission report. We're not going to get anywhere, however, by throwing more bull on top of the pile.
The quotation you use is full of pure non-fact: it claims 240,000 (1 out of 2) Gulf War vets is "on permanent medical disability" and that the amount of DU used in Afrghanistan and Iraq is the "radiological equivalent" of 333,000 of the (approx. 30 kiloton) bombs used at Nagasaki. (For comparison, the MinuteMan and MinuteMan 2 ICBMs featured 20-30 kiloton wareheads; at the peak of the armament, the world's arsenal was under 60,000 warheads. So briefly this guys is saying that the US released more radiation that 5 or so global thermonuclear wars... right).
Dealing with reality means dealing with facts, something this guy is obviously unwilling to do.
I just loved an insurance company in Berkeley that thought a good way to market its product, was to leave a flyer that looked like the local parking tickets on my car window.
Sure got my attention, and I'll remember them forever -- its been over five years, and I'm sure I'll never buy from them.
The local main USPS branch has just put in an automated postage kiosk; next to it, there is a sign with a motion detector, every time you get near it blares out a loud advertizement for the thing.
After the fourth or fifth time accidentally setting the thing off, I wanted to slap the sign. I mean, what would you do to a human who harassed you with advertizing in this manner? I can't imagine the idiocy we'll see before anything as slick as "Minority Report."
Technically, ''viruses'' and ''worms'' are slightly different things...
[A virus is] a tiny program, and when you click on it, it will reprogram parts of your computer to do something new, like display a message. A virus cannot kick-start itself; a human needs to be fooled into clicking on it.
Thank you /. editors, for letting me know the article is "very well written by an author who clearly knows his stuff." [sic doxamatum]
You miss-quotethe: the author wrote:
> geeks in the "open source" software community.
Evidently in the popular media open source gets to have quotes around it, as in "so-called" "open source." At least Mr. Thompson has graduated from calling us "hackers" and now uses the slightly better term "geeks." (I suppose it is better to be called a homosexual than a fag...).
I therefore can't believe this was posted with the description "It's very well written by an author who clearly knows his stuff." Well-written, maybe, knows his stuff, not.
It would hurt quite a lot not to state it:
1) Depending on the area of law, local regulation, etc., it may or may not be true if it is not stated (and may even not be true if stated). Ah technicality.
2) In the case of ambiguity, unclarity or error in a contract, the party that wrote the contract bears the burden: which means, an unclear term such as this may become non-binding for the other party, but remain binding for the party that wrote the contract; in other words, if you don't state that the invalidation of one term of the contract does not invalidate the whole, the non-contract-writing party may be able to invalidate the whole based on a part, but the contract-writing party may not.
Emphasis "may". The law is very complex on these issues, and I doubt there are many professors who know them exhaustively; I'm only summarizing what you learn in a first-year contracts course.
In any case, a click-through TOS is not a signed contract, so who cares
I would hardly call that a "point," except in the language of ignorance. Anyone who has gone through a top-100 comp sci program in the last 25 years knows how to implement one of 10 root-based algorythms that would catch such variations; rule-based systems can easily accomodate your Smith/Smythe example, if tree/root won't (in fact it will, as i=y and e drops). The fact that eBay is now run by a bunch of MBAs who can't get a decent search tool is not "useful."
The idea of "correct" spellings wouldn't have been accepted by the public if they didn't find some value in it.
Public? You think the public has anything to do with this, except to have them shoved down their throats, so to speak?
I once had a friend who had the rather unique displeasure of interviewing for a junior position in the English Department of Harvard University. During this drawn-out process, one of the rituals is to sit at dinner, served by women of the lower classes of Boston, making fun of their accents and "errors of language."
That is pretension. Unfortunately, it is also such menwho largely set so-called language standards. To respond to the anonymous poster, while the US does not have a ministry of language, it does have a Modern Language Association, largely publically funded, and a system of public institutions and "public" (it would be called "private" in England, for good reason) education that enforces such standards; some of us went to 'grammar school' in the days when 'mis-spelling' was "corrected" with a good twack of the ruler.
The bit about how people whose languages don't have standardised spellings, speak with creativity, blah, blah? Now that's pretentious.
Pretentious, root, pretend.
I would refer you to George Orwell's excellent "Politics and the English Language," and suggest, perhaps, a short trip to a city such as Ghent or Bratislava.
Two centuries for English as taught to 10% of the population in prep schools. The irony and pretension of the article is its assumption of 'correct' spelling: if you read the diaries of Lewis and Clark, much less Luther's bible, you'll quickly see that the idea of 'correct' spelling is a quite new one; before the Websters here and the Brothers Grimm in Germany decided to make a "standardized" dictionary, and before a government commission in each country decided to enforce what was in that dictionary, spellings were quite variate and diverse. And no one had the academic snobbishness to say one was particularly better than the other: the written word followed the spoken, as best it could.
Such variation existed openly until the mid-20th century in most of the world, and still does in many areas (such as Flanders) and regions (such as parts of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), not to mention in non-codified languages (such as Swiss Romand). To hear people speak such a language is to return to the days when language matched experience and creativity, and to places where our very words were not shoved down our throats by the boot of government decree. The "King's English," after all, is only a matter of geography away from the Reichschancellor's Deutsch.
I personally would prefer if our children filled their brains with mathematical formulae and natural relationships, than the minutae and minuta of proper spelling. Unless they are intent on becoming botanists, of course.
AARRRGGH. I hate ./ sometimes.
From the court summary of the decision:
The court affirmed a preliminary injunction enjoining defendant Zefer Corporation ("Zefer") from utilizing a "scrapper" tool it designed to obtain pricing information from plaintiff's website on the ground that Zefer was doing so to assist defendant Explorica, Inc. ("Explorica"), which was itself enjoined from such activity by virtue of its improper use of confidential information obtained from plaintiff to aid it in gathering this information.
This means that Zefer was prohibited from mining the data because their client (Explorica) was prohibited, because Explorica and Zefer had gained access to the data by exploiting confidential information. Which is another issue entirely from data mining...
Quite a number of people here are saying that you should use the DMCA provisions because they are available to you.
The problem with this argument is that, of course, should the DMCA every come up for legislative inquiry (as I hope it will), every vaguely reasonable use such as yours of the DMCA will be brought up to justify the DMCA.
On the other hand, if people like yourself explore standard means of response (of which people have posted many and there are more), you will display that there is no need for the DMCA.
(As an aside: how many complaints have you filed with eBay, over what time? From my experience they will suspend accounts with ongoing copyright violations -- even the use of other's copyrighted images. And you don't need to invoke DMCA to participate in VERO, which they will take more seriously).
Finally, few people have responded to more general questions about the DMCA as a tool for GPL etc software developers. My feeling is that DMCA is hardly a tool for the GPL community -- it was designed to let the big guys take immediate actions to harass others-- and I've get to hear even a concrete scenario aired here that would necessitate its use. Most violators are going to derive an income stream, and if someone is making money violating the GPL etc. terms, you can trace the money to find them, and you can track them down without the DMCA -- I bet the Canadian eBayer above would enjoy a visit from the Mounties, after all.
If you're not GPL or close -- well that's another can of worms. But do you really need to go so far as to invoke something like the DMCA to locate individual pirates? I'm more of the opinion that Kai Lee (of Kai's Power Tools, etc fame) expressed many years ago -- if someone finds a copy of your software and uses it to learn, or because they can't afford it, that's free advertizement; if they use your product regularly or to make a living, they should certainly buy a paid copy. Under such a view, what matters is a community ethic that says you should return what you get -- for instance, I've seen more than a few startups that survived on hacked copies of software and then dropped $20K on licenses when they took in income -- and such "creative licensing" is probably more valuable to most software endeavors than hunting down college kids with the DMCA. (And, of course, there are cases like time-limited shareware and authorization keys that don't necessarily fit this, but I'd want us to examine them on a case-by-case basis).
Actually, nowhere in the nice fluffy article does it state what confidentiality agreements he did or did not sign or what obligations he had to the firm, or what he did or didn't know and willingly do. Its hardly "espionage" if these documents (supposedly confidential, supposedly so secret that they were only printed on special paper -- but clearly not if they were being entered into a digital imaging system!...) came across his desk without any warning about their protected nature; if these had been documents about chemical waste disposal, he would be getting kudos for revealing them, a fact that exposes the highly political nature of what are called "trade secrets" -- (anyone remember when Apple threatened to sue people who distributed their dealer price lists?). The (very false and 1984 newspeakish) idea that a secret is a physical thing that can be "stolen" is quite a big stick to hand an industry that should be responsible for maintaining its own secrets via procedures and common sense (there is, at least, nothing "secret" about a price list that sits on top of the secretary's desk at 5,000 distributors).
On the other hand, if he knew what he was handling was confidential, and/or had signed agreements -- as is likely the case-- then that is an entirely different story and his lawyers have no business claiming a "childish mistake." If he knew what he was doing he should face some appropriate punishment (with consideration of his age), and the law firm probably should get some heat as well for the negligence of having a 19 year old in such a position. (Unlikely to happen as DirectTV probably doesn't want to piss off the firm, but it should happen).
But as usual, the devil of this case is in details that the reporter didn't seem to bother to inquire about, and it's rather sensational to have this case represented as governmental abuse etc. without those details
Thanks for your reply, which clarified your position for me.
/.
Unfortunately, I've often seen negative remarks from US developers here, and (without some more information), I'm afraid I do have an assumption of disguised racism etc. given the level of pure complaining on
On the other hand, your experience above brings back memories of many projects from San Francisco or San Jose companies that were just plain dumped on a foreign team through a recruiter... three years ago, I could have named 10 companies that would promise foreign "outsourcing" of almost any project... and usually the company purchasing the service had no history working with the foreign entity, little idea of the details on the other end, no intent to send a project manager to the foreign site... in short, no ability to manage the project. More than a few "incomplete" messes resulted, though it was not always simply a fault of the foreign teams, but as well of the lack-of-diligence culture that had developed in "the Valley."
It's a very large topic, but any sucessful use of a foreign team requires sucessful management understanding and planning, of course. You have to know the entity you're dealing with and how to interface with them, and, to some extent, their track record and competencies and personel. Someone -- or many someones -- have to get to know them, and there have to be formal or informal metrics of performance in place. If your organization has already worked with a foreign entity, you may have developed the trust to "drop" them a project without much supervision -- but if your organization doesn't have that experience, I at least would be wary.
And there's of course a reverse to my comment that Asia has large populations: they therefore product proportionately more bad programmers and shops, as well. Did the organization know the British shop or the "outsourced" shop-- at least, by reputation? How were they judged to be competent for the job (or now judged, if that was the case)? Most American organizations have some developed relationships with British and other "trustable" sources, if only as a result of their internal personel's previous experiences and contacts. Even in California, they usually lack the same level of internal experience with with Asian companies. The result is something of a double-edged sword: either their personel ignore a resource (Asian and other foreign programmers that they are unfamiliar with) precisely because they are unfamiliar with it, OR they (or management) somewhat blindly assume that foreign resources that they are unfamiliar with will produce what they expect from more familiar sources. And often, managment that simply contracts with a foreign outsourcer without established relationships is blissfully unaware that a programming project is often incapable of being wrapped up like an order for bolts and fulfilled anywhere: success or failure often depends not only on 'good communication' or raw 'skills', but on understandings and capabilities to communicate that are built up in personal relationships and time, as well as languages and cultures.
That is, a British firm may be a better choice simply because you're capable of interfacing with them more smoothly because of culture and language (even if your personel don't have established relations with them). While I phased it a bit too harshly to get the point across, one idea I meant above may be that you simply can't communicate with many foreign programmers -- either their skill in your language or yours in theirs is too poor to have a good interface. So it is often easier and simpler to deal with a British team vs. a Chinese team. You could also often say this about a British team versus a French or German or Finnish team, as well. Much of the last 20 years of technical development is filled with this... the Finns are great with each other and some other countries, etc... and the big consulting companies have equally been dealing with such issues for years as their teams have internationalized.
I'm sorry, I'm no racist, but this is simply the way things are.
./ treads on this) most innovative techical development outside biotech is Pacific Rim. In some circles, there is a new Chinese motto these days: roughtly, "what more does the West have to offer the world?" Asia views itself as the future, the West as old and dying, and they may very well be right, with you wanting $100K/yr for something they're glad (and quite capable) to sell for $20K.
/.ed to death). DBAs can make $150K/yr. not because what they do is difficult -- quite the opposite -- but because it is scarce. But China, India, etc. can produce them at a dime a dozen; we're no longer in the stage of history where foreigners come to the US and learn tech and stay, but just over the hump where they come, they learn, they leave... and teach others back home. It's those others back home who are innovating, while (let's be frank) most of big fat America sits on its arse in their SUVs. Give this pattern another 30 years and you won't have the luxury of complaining about foreign workers, because they'll be complaining about you :)
Well, you may want not to call a spade a spade, and maybe it's not racism, but it's certainly something, and it's also entirely wrong. Just because you can't communicate with someone doesn't mean they're stupid -- usually and probably the opposite, looking at your comments.
I've worked with programming groups in Lahore, outside Shanghai and in several other 'foreign' locations. Properly managed, there is nothing inferior or unprofessional about these workers -- in fact, usually just the opposite. China and India have huge populations (obviously), and (equally obviously) the best of their people congegate in the population centers looking for opportunity. In comparison with many (not all) US programmers (ever employ someone from Berkeley CS? Stanford? they think they own the world!), they are highly motivated, focused, capable, dependable, respectful and respectable. Many have significant project experience. And yes, they cost about a fifth of what you do, and are happy to make that amount. You need to face this, though I doubt you will.
On the other hand, if you're looking for very specific technical skills -- programming graphics chips, embedded systems, robotics equipment, CCD, and so forth -- that's much more rare, overall, and there's no Asian San Jose. But there are plenty of shops in Taiwan that specialize in various types of production and offer start-to-end costs that are still 1/5 of the US. And (like it or not, plenty of
The bottom line: there is not enough tech education in the US (another topic that's been
Which Apps are you referring to? True, I've seen hard-coded idiot installers, but any self-respecting Mac programmer ought to be calling the ToolBox,
I'm sure they could throw in a search for file location script in there as well, but for the most part it hasn't happened yet.
not assuming or searching or using any kind of script. Anything else (like the comment directly above) treats the MacOS as if it were WinDoze, which it absolutely, fundamentally isn't (idiot Carbon developers who come from DOS traditions nonwithstanding). MacOS is Toolbox-based, not directory-based; 'executables' are pointers within the desktop metaphor; and you should be able to move the underlying file as much as you want, without the pointer losing what it points to. If you can't follow the pointer, something's wrong.
#(@$$@)* Carbon developers. :P
has a file type and creator system (even if it's a quarter-century old), and :)
As has been previously discussed on Slashdot (re: cell phone jammers for theatres and restaurants), this is currently illegal in the United States. You cannot employ a communications blocking technology, and I very sincerely doubt that the cell companies would consent to see that overturned anywhere, as it would open the door for every theatre, restaurant, snobby bookstore and upscale coffeeshop in America having such technology. (PS: I've never seen a problem at Soldier Field, and am sure the cell companies would be all over it if it were due to 'blocking.')
Moreover, it's important to realize that such technology does not 'block' cell phones. It interferes with the original handshake with the carrier, making it impossible for the phone to sucessfully register/log on a specific network. In practice, (unless you get it to log onto a different network), this means that the cell phone moves into 'search' mode, in which it generates a lot of high power radio activity to try and find a cell.
I don't see how the 'inflight' companies could avoid this on older, single band phones -- and in fact, I suspect this 'inflight plan' is a bunch of marketing baloney, as all phones operate on wide, preset bands that will (by the rules) interfere with onboard equipment. The companies aren't going to create a technology that suddenly converts my worldphone from 900,1800 to 2900! or wherever may be safe. And in practice, the frequency overlap is so high -- a 900 MHz device is spewing all over everything from about 775 to 1025 -- that the plan in the article is plain silly.
Finally, of course, the simple fact is that a good number of people are just plain too careless to remember to turn their phones off during flight -- and, as a result, there are plenty of phones on during flight anyway, probably all in high-radiation 'search' mode. I've done it myself on busy days, found the phone searching and turned it off, and I travel a lot with a collegue whose phone always goes off about 3 minutes before landing, when the $%(#$* thing registers and his voicemail comes in. There's no evidence that this phenomenon has ever caused an in-flight problem.
If you're a frequent flyer, you can receive incoming calls on both AirCell and Verizon, via an 800 number and access code you distribute to contacts. It's quite nice for relaying basic messages -- I set up a series of codes with all my contacts in Boston (three rings, then three rings, means the tunnel is blocked and I have to get myself from the airport...). If only we could figure a way to do morse code!
>Let's not get carried away here. There's a
>difference between civil disobedience and breaking
>the law because you find it inconvenient
No.
I had the honour of meeting Ms. Rosa Parks about ten years ago, in a small forum. One of the people there asked her if she had meant to make a political statement, or expected such a response, when she sat down on the bus in Birmingham.
Her response was simply, "Heaven's no. I was just tired."
All the political ideologizing around civil dissobedience, like the recent TV movie about Ms. Parks life, misses the core of 'civil disobedience.' Coming from the perspective of society, they act like such disobedience is 'civil' because it is conducted for 'higher' ends, political or otherwise.
Thoreau's explanation in "Civil Disobedience" is much more to the point: civil disobedience is not "civil" (controlled and rational) at its start -- it is the natural act of a being (think Rousseau's noble savage) whose Consciousness rebels against the corruption of civil society.
That is, it is natural disobedience to civil society, because civil society is stupid and corrupt. As in any good political drama, the act comes first, the speech afterwards.
>Civil disobedience is a statement -- the action
> is secondary, a way of showing that you're
>serious
Again, just the opposite. Ms. Parks sat down because she was tired and the law was stupid. It was her natural right, whatever the law, like Antigone burying her brother despite Creon's decree to let the corpse rot on the battlefield.
You bury your brother's body, whatever the law -- duty, honour, family come first. If your body is tired, you sit -- no matter the colour of your skin. For Thoreau, if your country is fighting an ridiculous war in Mexico, you don't pay your taxes -- not as a statement, but because you can't stomach the act of paying for atrocities.
First you act, first you are disobedient, then the world gets to explain. All the politics, all the statements, all the explanations come later. First Rosa Parks sat because she was tired -- and because she was disobedient -- then people and political movements got to explain (and benefit from) that act.
But to say that Rosa Parks was trying to make a statement first, and the act was secondary, domesticates her into the same kind of house-pet-who-follows-the-rules as the police who arrested her. The core was not the statement -- plenty of people said Jim Crow laws were unfair, unjust, racist -- the core was the ACT of disobedience.
And anyone who's using DeCSS, smoking pot, driving above 55 on a four-lane non-interstate highway, or otherwise violating so-called 'laws' because they are ridiculous, is likely doing the same thing. They are refusing to be obedient to society, when natural law and logic dictate against it. They are pitting their action, or, like Rosa, their tired bodies, against the unnatural law of society.
And let the cry go forth: set our data free! What greater burden could come upon the people of this world, than that every word, every piece of data, every picture and sound and thought that might be recorded, come under the control of society (government, corporation, etc.)? That the stories I write to my daughter at night, the whispers in her ear, or my pictures of my dead parents -- that all these personal and sacred moments might need the approval -- and payment -- of Microsoft or anyone else, before I could share them with anyone else. How horrible, to think of scientists or artists needing to conform to the dictates of the Sony/Microsoft/RIAA Church, before they can talk to each other -- and having their communications censored...
It is the exact same situation as the medieval Catholic Church refusing to let commoners read or interpret the "word of G-d" -- and creating a priesthood to stand in between, contolling both sides, profiting from it. (For a very good explanation of the priesthood of IBM, search Google for a copy of Ted Nelson's _Dream Machines_).
It's one thing to have IBM or Microsoft stand between corporations and their data and business processes, bilking them for money in the process. It's quite another to have all of society, all music, all writing, all video, all knowledge, controlled by such a priesthood.
The prospect is horrific. It is also entirely contradictory to the principles of a democratic, free society.
In such a political climate, anyone who uses DeCSS is a patriot, regardless of motive -- and I will remind you that the American "Founding Fathers" were also smugglers and worse who benefited quite nicely from their acts of disobedience to the British king.
> and don't
>really expect to get caught.
Yes, if he doesn't expect to get caught, he's perhaps a weasly patriot -- but again, the point isn't standing up and making a statement (tea party or not). It's taking (natural) action, sharing information freely, using DVDs with Linux systems if you want to, sending a song to your wife when she's in another town -- these are things to be defended, these are the ACTS to be defended. And the question is not whether the person above, or I, or you, or anyone will make a statement and get arrested -- I remind you, that the Boston Tea Partiers ran away after the party -- but, when the time comes, when the British soldiers land, when the fasist comes knocking on your neighbor's door because of his Linux box -- will we stand up as a people, will you stand up, rush to his defense, act against the injustice? Or will we sink away, tell ourselves "at least it's not me," until we become the peasants and slaves of the new Dark Ages?
>A 1024 X 768 will require atleast 786,433 electical
:P
>contections, and wires made of metal. I expect
>serious problems with metal-fatigue induced
>conductor fractures, for roll-up displays.
Ever heard of nanotubes?
OK, so nanotubes can't be produced in consistent batches today -- but, assuming that's not fixed in the next couple months, there are plenty of non-brittle conductive options... the usual solution at large scale is a metal-plastic alloy, and I'm sure that the boys who came up with the screens can come up with a power solution
You can find the location of every poletop Metricom ever put up as part of the bankruptcy sale asset list at the metricom sale site.
but Aerie has the rights to that equipment as well.
I'm afraid not. The poletop easements and the equipment on them were abandoned by the bankrupcy court, which is what caused Aerie to reduce their bid to $8.25M from $20M; see news coverage for details: Aerie will have to rebuild the equipment.
No, the photocopy is definately an "unauthorized copy," which is all the copyright act defines.
Should M$ or the gov't attempt to prosecute someone who makes such an unauthorized copy for copyright violation, the fact that they held an authorized copy at the time the copy was made, for 'backup purposes,' would be a very, very strong "fair use" defense.
To clarify here: any copy not authorized by the copyright holder is an "unauthorized copy" in the view of the Law. It is possible to claim that one is making "fair use" copies -- backup, academic purposes, etc -- that are unauthorized, but which you can't be prosecuted for.
Also, FYI, the legislation is centered on the act of copying, not in holding the copy -- no doubt M$ is scared about the fact that there's very little offense in making a "backup" copy, then failing to destroy it...
Any exactly how is Micro$oft proposing telling the difference? Inspecting my hard drive?
Fact is, if I do this, it's the upgrade copy on my hard drive that is unauthorized. It's like photocopying a book and selling the original. Selling the original has nothing to do with the fact that I've kept an unauthorized photocopy. And trying to stop me from selling the original is a restrain of free trade, carried out (in the eBay case) by fraud on Micro$oft's part.
Do you believe everything you read? These 'warnings' have about as much legal status as the "swim at your own risk" signs at public pools. They don't mean that you can't sue the pool owner -- they're just there to scare people who might otherwise sue.
If you received a copy of an M$ product with your computer, you can resell it under the first purchase doctrine. If there was a 'license agreement' with the computer that says you can't, well, that 'license agreement' doesn't hold under US law. And, well, as far as I can tell, nothing under the first purchase doctrine requires you to keep Micro$oft's bloody license certificates or document that you have the right to use a piece of software. Do you have to document your right to use a book that you bought?
If you want to understand this in detail, start looking a the copyright section of the EFF site.
Yes, but the prohibited act here is making the photocopy, not selling the original.
EULAs have not held up on court inspection and Micro$oft's policy re: eBay barely has a leg to stand on. I buy a copy of Windows, I have a right to sell it, regardless of what the EULA says.