1. Did Ellison actually violate the EULA. While the article doesn't provide much information, it doesn't sound like he did. To truly publish a benchmark, you've got to give specific numbers. If Ellison did that, even in his speech, he has published his numbers. If he said that Oracle has run benchmarks (and even if he ran them side-by-side and let people see), it's a big stretch to say that he published the results. He is really characterizing his company's experience in running the benchmarks -- providing conclusions that are based on the benchmark results. I don't think that's the same thing.
2. The other issue is whether the EULA provision is enforcable. I don't have the first clue on that issue, but it certainly seems suspect. After all, it comes under the category of a company disclosing its own experience with a product. One imagines something akin to telling a company that they can't tell tell anyone that a product hasn't worked well for them. I can't believe that a Court would allow that sort of restriction. The qustion is where to draw the line.
In the U.S. an employer is fully within its rights to monitor e-mail, phone calls and what have you so long as employees are informed that it may happen (not required on a per-call basis). There are some requirements to stop listening/reading once it is clear that you are dealing with purely personal material, but the cat is often out of the bag by then.
While annoying, it doesn't seem completely unreasonable. One should hope that nobody could stay in business investing the kind of resources to meaningfully monitor everybody's every move.
At the same time, one would like to think that employees who threaten others, conspire to steal, etc. could be monitored and apprehended.
Well, I don't feel so bad now. Will Katz even vot
on
Should You Vote?
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· Score: 1
If caring about my children makes me a Luddite, then I am proud to be a Luddite. I refuse to accept, however, that one must live the Amish life to raise kids.
I am a little curious why caring about my children is a position worthy of ridicule. I understand (speaking from an American view) precisely what the First Amendment guarantees and believe in it absolutely. Part of caring about my children is caring that they have a free and vital world to grow into. Part of caring about my children is not giving a damn what people call me when I am looking out for them.
As to voting? Those of you who don't care or want to vote? Please don't. After all, you don't like the candidates, and none of them speak to the thing you care about (would that be loud music and beer?). Who know? Maybe in the next election, they'll spend all of their time campaigning to the people who don't bother to vote.
Right?
Al Gore
Brittny Spears
Madonna
Kevin Costner
Information SuperHighway
Dot.com riding high
Dot.com flaming out
Violence in the Middle East
Low fat diets
This year's hemline
Might as well explode
I don't really know why you would want to encrypt a dead filesystem instead of just throwing the stupid disk into the trash. I mean, it's one thing to bury people and all, but a filesystem on a hard drive?
When my daughter's goldfish died, we didn't encrypt it. We flushed it down the toilet! It was a living thing until it died and we just flushed it down the toilet.
BTW: Please don't tell her that we did that. She thinks it's in "fishie heaven".
You're absolutely right about the "circuit" v. "trunk" part of it.
At the device level, however, you have additional pportunities for privacy loss.
For example, anyone using a telephone is only half a conversation. That means that anyone on the other end of a conversation is also being tapped. Not so bad for those conversations that the govt. is looking to capture, not so good for those who have nothing to do with the case. Prior to reaching the trial, humans have to listen to the recordings to filter out conversations not within the scope of the enabling court order. All of those filtered out conversations are instances of lost privacy.
Additionally, a single device can be used by multiple people, some of whom are not the target of an investigation.
Personal disclaimer: I graduated from Chicago-Kent and do not believe that the folks there would "turn over" for the government. That would, in the end, be bad for them and bad for the Law School. Remember: Lawyers often make their money and reputations by fighting against misbehaving elements of the government. Besides, the first time Carnivore generated data gets used in trial, the defendants will claim that it is unconstitutional. Case goes out the door if the judge agrees.
anyway...
The part that interested me:
If appropriate filters are used in a sniffer or other network monitoring device, preventing human knowledge of material that is filtered out, there may be less threat to privacy interests than if human beings must review content in order to apply minimization requirements, as is commonplace with telephone wiretaps.
I don't know how we feel warm and fuzzy about it, but digital eavesdropping at least has the theoretical capability to be digitally filtered, with only relevant info ever seeing human eyes. Analog phone taps don't have that.
I didn't thing Bush said that the internet by itself could do squat.
Most reasonably healthy adults are not going to be twisted by the net. I include 18 year olds in that category.
I admit to my own concerns, though. I have 3 kids of my own. I would love to turn them loose on the net, but don't unless I am there to supervise. Younger kids (not 18 year olds, I would hope) don't know how to parse a lot of this stuff -- and there is a lot of crud and misinformation out there, not to mention stalkers (I presume and hope rare).
All of the unrestricted content (and it ain't just the internet) makes it a lot harder for parents than it used to be. This is especially true when you consider how many one parent families and families with two parents working are out there. That means parents with more on their mind, less energy and less time to supervise and interact with their kids are facing a world that needs more energy and supervision from them.
This morning when I got up, and sourceforge and others had yet to update, this UK site (gotta love timezones) already had everything up. Not only that, I got 75 kilobytes/sec download. Twelve minutes and done.
At least Microsoft isn't spending it on something else.
In a weird way, it could turn out well.
It is sort of a back-door endorsement of Linux by Microsoft. That may not impress anyone with full cranial capacity, but CIOs don't appear, as a group, to fall in that category.
Cheez, Looeez! Who cares!!
I couldn't get to the site to read the analysis, but it doesn't matter. This is already months old pseudo-technology.
The big thing now is ESSNLN (Extra-Sensory Subscriber No Line Needed).
By taking advantage of enemployed psychics left in the lurch when the Psychic Friends Network tanked, we can achieve mirculous data rates and improve your love life (how hard could that be>) at the same time.
Don't waste another minute: You can get in on the ground floor. ESP-mail me now!
A spoonful of sugar makes the charge time go down
on
Proton Polymer Battery
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· Score: 1
the environmental load of the device is reduced (polymer consists of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen)
Sounds like cake. Cake has wheat, eggs and milk, so it must be nutritious.
Seriously, though, it sounds pretty exciting.
Maybe they can make an electric car that can carry the family and get to highway speed before we need to charge the batteries.
This one pulls me both ways. On the one hand, people who put out seriously bad crap, don't meet the terms of their contract, cause serious harm to the client and don't make good that harm, should be sued and should lose. I even love the notion of contract provisions demanding that certain segments of the browsing public be able to use the site (AOL is a lot of eyeballs, Netscape is a lot of eyeballs, Linux is low percentage, but still millions of eyeballs). If these people really did abuse the client and then fail to make good, then sue the bastards. Web development is a business like any other (believe it or don't). On the other hand, this kind of suit (essentially a software contract) has, historically, a very low likelihood of success. Software suits just tend to lose as judges figure that, in a contract between businesses -sophisticated party to sophisticated party- the client should understand that software is different from cars. Too bad, really. Frivolous lawsuits suck, but so does lack of accountability.
Love it. While it won't solve the problem, it's nice to see someone take an internet approach to an internet problem. Also love all the whines from those poor inconvenienced folks who have to check out one more box to pirate their tunes. My heart breaks.
A lot of great insights here that reflect an excellent understanding of the relative worth of process and people, of the difference between making work better and covering butts.
In my experience, there is a simple way to test the benefit of a process or procedure: Do you have to force your best and most conscientious developers to use it?
Good developers (generalizing here. People being people, we will always have exceptions) tend to embrace things that make their jobs easier. Things that result in a better outcome tend to make their jobs easier overall. Note: This test doesn't apply very well to initial adaptation. Few people take well to change.
The flip-side of this criterion is that every new procedure or requirement must be critically analyzed for its benefit to the people being asked to use it, and how much effort it adds.
Cumbersome processes will be circumvented at crunch time. Period. It is always better to have a lightweight process that will actually be used than a supposedly superior process that will be ignored.
Cheez. I see the "lost in cyberspace" crowd is out in force here. Check in with planet earth sometime soon, guys.
1. People who jaywalk or stupid. Still, you're in for murder if you INTENTIONALLY run them down with your car. Using Outlook and Office, etc. may be stupid. Your stupidity may open you to criminal attacks, but it does not excuse the criminals.
2. Who gives a flying ---- about whether this thing is a virus, worm or teletubby? If it knocks out servers, it denies service. Check the book, guys. That's what "denial of service" means. It's bad, it's expensive, it's criminal.
One really good point has been raised, however. This whole Melissa thing is not that different (save from going into Outlook and multiplying like a freakin' rabbit) from aggressive spam. Frankly, I'm not sure some of the big-time spammers aren't skating awfully close to criminal acts.
McCarthyism? Just because we want people to know they shouldn't buy Toshiba laptops if they want to use Linux and IRDA? Let's get some perspective here, guys!! McCarthyism was a cancer fouling the very fabric of our society, respecting neither law nor right, disdaining truth and the lives of those it trampled. Not buying Toshiba laptops for Linux and IRDA (or is that IrDA, or what?) is plain, honest technical advice. Kind of like telling people not to buy Macs if they want to run Windows or not to buy Corvettes if they want to burn diesel. If we hurt somebody's feelings over at Toshiba, we need not feel bad. It will be a natural and reasonable consequence of their own actions, not a mindless witch hunt.
1. I agree that we both use spell-checkers 2. I said commercial and that's what I meant. I will, however, concede that "proprietary" more strictly reflects the text of his rant. I believe that Stallman objects to anyone exerting and profiting from any ownership rights deriving from the labor of producing software.
This, in a funny way, argues against his position being "pinko". Tt's true that profitting from property rights is a classicly Capitalist behavior. However, in the case of a self-emplyed programmer, all of its value would accrue directly from her labor and so should accrue directly to her (setting aside all that from each according to his ability and to each according to his need crap).
The ONLY thing they got at all right was the leftward lean of some OSS advocates. Did you see Stallman's recent rant about the LGPL ? He doesn't want people to make their LIBRARIES available for commecial use, so that free software projects have an advantage agains those mean nasty folks with bills to pay. Must not pay attention to his own writings. After all, isn't he the one who said that open source stuff is inherently better than closed and hence at a competitive advantage in the first place?
Kinda funny from someone who bristles at not getting proper credit whenever someone sasys Linux instead of GNU/Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Two different issues here:
1. Did Ellison actually violate the EULA. While the article doesn't provide much information, it doesn't sound like he did. To truly publish a benchmark, you've got to give specific numbers. If Ellison did that, even in his speech, he has published his numbers. If he said that Oracle has run benchmarks (and even if he ran them side-by-side and let people see), it's a big stretch to say that he published the results. He is really characterizing his company's experience in running the benchmarks -- providing conclusions that are based on the benchmark results. I don't think that's the same thing.
2. The other issue is whether the EULA provision is enforcable. I don't have the first clue on that issue, but it certainly seems suspect. After all, it comes under the category of a company disclosing its own experience with a product. One imagines something akin to telling a company that they can't tell tell anyone that a product hasn't worked well for them. I can't believe that a Court would allow that sort of restriction. The qustion is where to draw the line.
In the U.S. an employer is fully within its rights to monitor e-mail, phone calls and what have you so long as employees are informed that it may happen (not required on a per-call basis). There are some requirements to stop listening/reading once it is clear that you are dealing with purely personal material, but the cat is often out of the bag by then.
While annoying, it doesn't seem completely unreasonable. One should hope that nobody could stay in business investing the kind of resources to meaningfully monitor everybody's every move.
At the same time, one would like to think that employees who threaten others, conspire to steal, etc. could be monitored and apprehended.
If caring about my children makes me a Luddite, then I am proud to be a Luddite. I refuse to accept, however, that one must live the Amish life to raise kids.
I am a little curious why caring about my children is a position worthy of ridicule. I understand (speaking from an American view) precisely what the First Amendment guarantees and believe in it absolutely. Part of caring about my children is caring that they have a free and vital world to grow into. Part of caring about my children is not giving a damn what people call me when I am looking out for them.
As to voting? Those of you who don't care or want to vote? Please don't. After all, you don't like the candidates, and none of them speak to the thing you care about (would that be loud music and beer?). Who know? Maybe in the next election, they'll spend all of their time campaigning to the people who don't bother to vote.
Right?
Al Gore
Brittny Spears
Madonna
Kevin Costner
Information SuperHighway
Dot.com riding high
Dot.com flaming out
Violence in the Middle East
Low fat diets
This year's hemline
Might as well explode
When my daughter's goldfish died, we didn't encrypt it. We flushed it down the toilet! It was a living thing until it died and we just flushed it down the toilet.
BTW: Please don't tell her that we did that. She thinks it's in "fishie heaven".
You're absolutely right about the "circuit" v. "trunk" part of it.
At the device level, however, you have additional pportunities for privacy loss.
For example, anyone using a telephone is only half a conversation. That means that anyone on the other end of a conversation is also being tapped. Not so bad for those conversations that the govt. is looking to capture, not so good for those who have nothing to do with the case. Prior to reaching the trial, humans have to listen to the recordings to filter out conversations not within the scope of the enabling court order. All of those filtered out conversations are instances of lost privacy.
Additionally, a single device can be used by multiple people, some of whom are not the target of an investigation.
Personal disclaimer: I graduated from Chicago-Kent and do not believe that the folks there would "turn over" for the government. That would, in the end, be bad for them and bad for the Law School. Remember: Lawyers often make their money and reputations by fighting against misbehaving elements of the government. Besides, the first time Carnivore generated data gets used in trial, the defendants will claim that it is unconstitutional. Case goes out the door if the judge agrees.
anyway...
The part that interested me:
If appropriate filters are used in a sniffer or other network monitoring device, preventing human knowledge of material that is filtered out, there may be less threat to privacy interests than if human beings must review content in order to apply minimization requirements, as is commonplace with telephone wiretaps.
I don't know how we feel warm and fuzzy about it, but digital eavesdropping at least has the theoretical capability to be digitally filtered, with only relevant info ever seeing human eyes. Analog phone taps don't have that.
I didn't thing Bush said that the internet by itself could do squat.
Most reasonably healthy adults are not going to be twisted by the net. I include 18 year olds in that category.
I admit to my own concerns, though. I have 3 kids of my own. I would love to turn them loose on the net, but don't unless I am there to supervise. Younger kids (not 18 year olds, I would hope) don't know how to parse a lot of this stuff -- and there is a lot of crud and misinformation out there, not to mention stalkers (I presume and hope rare).
All of the unrestricted content (and it ain't just the internet) makes it a lot harder for parents than it used to be. This is especially true when you consider how many one parent families and families with two parents working are out there. That means parents with more on their mind, less energy and less time to supervise and interact with their kids are facing a world that needs more energy and supervision from them.
This morning when I got up, and sourceforge and others had yet to update, this UK site (gotta love timezones) already had everything up. Not only that, I got 75 kilobytes/sec download. Twelve minutes and done.
At least Microsoft isn't spending it on something else.
In a weird way, it could turn out well.
It is sort of a back-door endorsement of Linux by Microsoft. That may not impress anyone with full cranial capacity, but CIOs don't appear, as a group, to fall in that category.
Wonder if it can surf the interwet?
The big thing now is ESSNLN (Extra-Sensory Subscriber No Line Needed).
By taking advantage of enemployed psychics left in the lurch when the Psychic Friends Network tanked, we can achieve mirculous data rates and improve your love life (how hard could that be>) at the same time.
Don't waste another minute: You can get in on the ground floor. ESP-mail me now!
Sounds like cake. Cake has wheat, eggs and milk, so it must be nutritious.
Seriously, though, it sounds pretty exciting. Maybe they can make an electric car that can carry the family and get to highway speed before we need to charge the batteries.
This one pulls me both ways. On the one hand, people who put out seriously bad crap, don't meet the terms of their contract, cause serious harm to the client and don't make good that harm, should be sued and should lose. I even love the notion of contract provisions demanding that certain segments of the browsing public be able to use the site (AOL is a lot of eyeballs, Netscape is a lot of eyeballs, Linux is low percentage, but still millions of eyeballs). If these people really did abuse the client and then fail to make good, then sue the bastards. Web development is a business like any other (believe it or don't). On the other hand, this kind of suit (essentially a software contract) has, historically, a very low likelihood of success. Software suits just tend to lose as judges figure that, in a contract between businesses -sophisticated party to sophisticated party- the client should understand that software is different from cars. Too bad, really. Frivolous lawsuits suck, but so does lack of accountability.
Love it. While it won't solve the problem, it's nice to see someone take an internet approach to an internet problem. Also love all the whines from those poor inconvenienced folks who have to check out one more box to pirate their tunes. My heart breaks.
A lot of great insights here that reflect an excellent understanding of the relative worth of process and people, of the difference between making work better and covering butts.
In my experience, there is a simple way to test the benefit of a process or procedure: Do you have to force your best and most conscientious developers to use it?
Good developers (generalizing here. People being people, we will always have exceptions) tend to embrace things that make their jobs easier. Things that result in a better outcome tend to make their jobs easier overall. Note: This test doesn't apply very well to initial adaptation. Few people take well to change.
The flip-side of this criterion is that every new procedure or requirement must be critically analyzed for its benefit to the people being asked to use it, and how much effort it adds.
Cumbersome processes will be circumvented at crunch time. Period. It is always better to have a lightweight process that will actually be used than a supposedly superior process that will be ignored.
Cheez. I see the "lost in cyberspace" crowd is out in force here.
Check in with planet earth sometime soon, guys.
1. People who jaywalk or stupid. Still, you're in for murder if you INTENTIONALLY run them down with your car. Using Outlook and Office, etc. may be stupid. Your stupidity may open you to criminal attacks, but it does not excuse the criminals.
2. Who gives a flying ---- about whether this thing is a virus, worm or teletubby?
If it knocks out servers, it denies service.
Check the book, guys. That's what "denial of service" means.
It's bad, it's expensive, it's criminal.
One really good point has been raised, however.
This whole Melissa thing is not that different (save from going into Outlook and multiplying like a freakin' rabbit) from aggressive spam.
Frankly, I'm not sure some of the big-time spammers aren't skating awfully close to criminal acts.
McCarthyism? Just because we want people to know they shouldn't buy Toshiba laptops if they want to use Linux and IRDA?
Let's get some perspective here, guys!!
McCarthyism was a cancer fouling the very fabric of our society, respecting neither law nor right, disdaining truth and the lives of those it trampled.
Not buying Toshiba laptops for Linux and IRDA (or is that IrDA, or what?) is plain, honest technical advice. Kind of like telling people not to buy Macs if they want to run Windows or not to buy Corvettes if they want to burn diesel.
If we hurt somebody's feelings over at Toshiba, we need not feel bad. It will be a natural and reasonable consequence of their own actions, not a mindless witch hunt.
1. I agree that we both use spell-checkers
2. I said commercial and that's what I meant. I will, however, concede that "proprietary" more strictly reflects the text of his rant. I believe that Stallman objects to anyone exerting and profiting from any ownership rights deriving from the labor of producing software.
This, in a funny way, argues against his position being "pinko". Tt's true that profitting from property rights is a classicly Capitalist behavior. However, in the case of a self-emplyed programmer, all of its value would accrue directly from her labor and so should accrue directly to her (setting aside all that from each according to his ability and to each according to his need crap).
The ONLY thing they got at all right was the leftward lean of some OSS advocates. Did you see Stallman's recent rant about the LGPL ? He doesn't want people to make their LIBRARIES available for commecial use, so that free software projects have an advantage agains those mean nasty folks with bills to pay. Must not pay attention to his own writings. After all, isn't he the one who said that open source stuff is inherently better than closed and hence at a competitive advantage in the first place?
Kinda funny from someone who bristles at not getting proper credit whenever someone sasys Linux instead of GNU/Linux.