Freedom of speech doesn't mean you don't have consiquences: others may disagree, yell at you, argue, even dislike and avoid you. It does, however, mean you should be able to speak without sanctions being taken against you, whether it be by an employer, an organization, or a government.
Nonsense. Your freedom of speech does not guarantee anything in the private sector. I.e. it does not guarantee your employment contract, your image, your customers, others' opinions about you, or others' actions taken based on opinions expressed from your free speech. In other words, you may well express bad opinions about your employer, but your employer does not have to keep employing you as their salesperson, or spokesperson. Your may badmouth your customers, but they don't have to keep paying for your product or service. What you said is very wrong on so many levels, most of all that your free speech right would trump others' free speech and other rights as well.
It is obvious if you read the U.S. Constitution (the document you are referring to) that it refers to Government's actions to censor free speech, not your private life.
While they don't disagree with the message, they still want the messenger dead.
I have a few ideas.
1. SPAM the text messaging system. 2. Halt the trading of text messages during the opening of high budget movies.
Nobody has suggested killing a messenger, the article simply identified the problem with the "drop-off". If you insist, however, I have another option on how to handle these messengers, and of course, it involves the infamous "there ought to be a law":
Everyone knows that wireless services are an open network for illegal transactions such as bad movie reviews that are in direct contradiction with the carefullly crafted advertisements and previews from the MPAA. This is costing the movie industry lost revenues and wasted advertizing dollars. Here are the numbers:
1. There are over 6 billion people in the world; 2. Half of all population will have a cell phone by 2005 - that's 3 billion people; 2. At least 1 in every 3 people sends a text message to a friend per day, that's 1 billion text messages a day; 3. Naturally, we assume that all those text messages are bad movie reviews so that's 1 billion bad movie reviews a day; 4. At an average worldwide ticket price of $5 per show, movie industry is losing $5 billion per day!!! 5. There ought to be a law to make these ill-conceived activities illegal that cause legitimate, and fairly marketed products fail so miserably.
I propose a Digital Movie Critics Act (DMCA) that will mandate that all wireless providers monitor all text or multimedia messaging transmissions between their subscribers. In the case that they detect a bad movie review being transmitted, or a negative comment made on any MPAA product without authorization, the case with all personal information of the subscriber will be reported directly to MPAA for further investigation.
Based on the goodwill of MPAA, if they determine that an illegal act has been committed, they will be able to recover damages from each individual violator. Damages will be set as follows: from $500 up to $150,000 per incident, depending on the advertizing cost of the movie being critiqued and/or up to 5 years imprisonment per incident. Wireless service provider will be required to terminate the subscriber's service.
... If Ford Motor Co. decided to implement considerably radical changes to their automobile line, they'd list the reasons why it was necessary, which in turn would have to come under public and government scrutiny. Same with any other company that doesn't deal with software.
Somehow software industry is a banana republic that gets off the hook in respect to accountability. If Microsoft was in a business of producing pharmaceuticals, I doubt they would be in a business long enough...
This is a typical - "if pigs had wings [insert your agenda here]" - argument. In fact, comparing different industries like that is misleading at the very least. As another example, let's compare airplane manufacturers and fashion industry manufacturers. You would agree that if Boeing were to move or outsource its Everett factory and a large part of their corporate office to China, it would generate more public scrutiny than fashion manufacturers doing the same. Substitute fashion with semiconductors, software, most household items you buy at the store and you'll see comparing "accountability" between industries yields a very large spectrum from none to complete.
Now, you can argue that software makers need to be accountable to public but a blanket comparison to automobile or pharmaceutical industries is not supporting that argument, rather, demonstrating its fallacy. Software industry does not need to be "accountable" only because auto and airplane industries are. Rather, the question is what public good will this imposed larger "accountability" bring? And what will be drawbacks?
As I see it: Pros: 1. lawyers are able to sue software manufacturers for just about every bug found; 2. illusion of "safe and secure" software. Note: I am not sure these are pros.
Cons: 1. entry barrier raised (legal and financial); 2. big corporations get special treatment, small companies suffer; 3. mandatory hardware encryption (mandated by corps and/or gov't); 4. Free software gone (both from legal and economic factors - see item 1); 5. reinforcing monopoly power in the industry, oligopoly/cartel at best; 6. driving out competition in PC hardware market.
You see, until someone argues what public good larger software industry "accountability" will bring and how, I fail to see the legitimacy for its comparison to other industries.
While I'm a very big Apple fan, and advocate their product use at every given opportunity, at the same time I understand how this corporation is known to employ predatory practices from time to time. Killing off smaller competitors, pushing their own standards forward, etc. The paradox lies in Apple's ability to get it right most of the time. But that doesn't mean that Apple would be better than Microsoft have they had 90% market share. When AAPL breaks the 50% market share (hypothetically speaking that is), you'd see far worse anti-user practices than that of Microsoft. I can guarantee that.
I agree here. As it stands right now, by their own practices Apple has set their own market share ceiling at about 5%. I don't see how this will change unless they make drastic changes, everything else being equal. And that is the key. Of course, if some legislation created under "larger accountability" banner, as its byproduct, forms MS-Apple cartel on consumer software market then your analysis will kick in. As it is now, Apple, MS, and others do have to compete against each other, and that is good news.
Software industry doesn't abide by rules of accepted business practices. "Any company" cannot act like Microsoft, otherwise they'd be out of business.
That's true, but most companies are not monopolies in their respective industries. There are many examples of companies acting similar to MS. In fact, all monopolies are good examples. Take a look at the history of oil industry and telecommunica
I still do not think it is technically feasible to track people from any distance using RFIDs. I think range would be a problem. That is what I meant when I said it was implausible that the gov't could have such a device, not that it wouldn't want one, or wouldn't deploy it if it had one. I think you missed that, as your response seems only to cover what could happen if it did exist, glossing over the very good chance that it doesn't and can't.
There seem to be differing opinions on what could the range of these transmitters be, or what methods could best be used to activate the transmission. Even if we assume that the range is very short, one can still do sufficient tracking in the entrances to public places such as sporting events, concerts, gov't and other important buildings, airports, shopping malls, etc. Could you be refused entry, service, or be subject to a full search if the resulting information determines your threat level to be yellow, or red? That's what is happening in the airports right now. If you get pulled over by a police officer when you are driving is that a probable cause for him to have access to all information obtained through scanning your RFID transmitters? Even if you had an option to voluntarily consent to such "search" would you be treated with more suspicion if you didn't? In other words, even assuming the transmitters do not have long range, it is still possible and very feasible to abuse the system.
Most of what you describe is quite possible and feasible as well. Here are the answers:
So, you are saying that it would work like this. I go to the store, and buy a pair of shoes with a credit card. The RFID in the shoes is scanned in order to bring up a price to charge my card. So conceivably there could be a database somewhere that matches my financial info, including my name and address, etc, to an RFID tag in my shoes. Presuming the government could get access to a database like this, they could track people with some kind of device that could read the RFID tags from a distance. Thereby tracking my movements with my shoes.
They already have you beat on this one. Gov't can already access commercial databases without your consent when you purchase an airline ticket and get to the airport. This is a new color-coding system that they assign a color code to each passenger and to their "threat level".
With each step in this process I have detailed, things become more and more implausible. Retail store having database records of purchases, likely, I am willing to believe. Government getting access to database, not too likely but possible with warrants or something.
See above. If they do it to the airline industry, they can extend it to other industries as well. E.g. they can get your threat level before you enter a railroad station, public parade area, football game, concert, etc.
Government having device that can read the tags from a distance great enough to use it to effectively track your movements, probably next to impossible. I doubt these things are detectable at a range that would make tracking people practical. If you are willing to believe the government has the resources to put the trackers everywhere, on every streetcorner, without anyone knowing or getting upset, for budgetary if not privacy reasons, well...
They could equip FBI, local police, and maybe even security guards with such devices - I don't see a problem here. As far as privacy concerns - yes there are and will/would be a lot, but the attitude that you express doesn't help that. Even with the airline passengers color-coding system, where did these privacy concerns get? Almost nowhere with only one major admission that the gov't will not store your color-coded data for more than certain period of time.
Another obvious problem is what happens if I resell my shoes, or donate them to charity, or any number of other things that could cause inaccurate information in the database.
Charities that are accreditted as charitable organizations by the federal gov't could be required to report all RFID tags that they have received or transferred.
Will these types of devices draw us closer to licensing products to you and not selling them? Could it be illegal to sell an object equipped with RFID because it contains someone's IP, plus you'd probably be supporting terrorists? That's a far-fetched, yet interesting thought.
Finally, isn't it legal to observe people in public places? That is the very definition of public, a place where you cannot control being observed by others. The government might as well be looking at you if ten or twenty people you don't know personally are. I'm not saying that if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, or some other silly thing. I just think expecting privacy in public is unrealistic.
This has already been answered by others. Gov't cannot invade your privacy by tracking your every move and recording it without a probable cause, at least according to the U.S. Constitution anyway. But who's paying attention to that silly thing nowadays?
Have you ever installed an ATAPI CD burner? Not exactly plug-and-play. nVidia GeForce card? Not bad, but if you happen to have an AMD Athlon with the AGP problem, um, have fun.:) Scanner? Web cam? These things generally aren't all that easy to install.
I totally disagree. I have an AMD Athlon box with GeForce4 on AGP, CD-RW, webcam and bluetooth, among others. All of these devices have been configured by the system. I have had to mess with any of the modules, drivers, compiling, etc. exactly 0 times.
I use SuSE 8.2. If I do put a new hardware in, YaST recognizes it on the next boot and promptly sets it up with a few clicks.
By contrast, I tried setting up the webcam (USB) on my laptop on Windows XP and those "few clicks" landed me nowhere. Camera is recognized but I don't get any picture from it. And, there is no way to uninstall and reinstall whatever the setup installed the first time around.
The hardware support is pretty damn good considering all those devices and their accompanying software are made to run mostly exclusively on Windows.
OK... I'll ask you to make a ballpoint pen, just like the ones they sell in packs everywhere. First, I'll ask you to make plastic material - you'll need to make a straw and the outside cover of the pen and mold it in shape; then you'll have to make ink that you will fill the plastic straw with; then you'll need to get [whatever] metal they use to make ballpoint and make it so it fits perfectly without leaking in the plastic straw; all this while making sure the straw and ballpoint also fit in perfectly with the outside plastic cover; oh... and make sure it is comfortable when I pick it up and write with it too.
For all this... I give you... $.10. What you say?
Seriously, the USPS rates may be cheap or reasonable, but that's not the way to show it. In fact, it just ignores simple principles. Obviously, the more pens you make, or the more letters you handle, that $.37 becomes a better deal. On top of that, USPS is a regulated monopoly. And when you take that into account also, then it's your judgement has to be made up from economics of the service vs. public good it provides and possible competition/business it eliminates. Just don't shell out with - if you think USPS is expensive, go deliver this letter cheaper yourself - type of story.
Actually Ellison (like McNealy) is a well know Microsoft hater. Althought Linux is one of the best developement environments available I wouldn't be suprised if the decision to swith to Linux was partially out of spite for Microsoft.
Actually, they mostly used Solaris as stated by this ZDNet article.
Ah, but what if you put up a website calling for the beheading of Bill Gates, along with prominent links to guillotine schematics? Or demanding that he be keelhauled, and putting up information on building clipper ships. Worst of all, you could say he ought to die of a heart attack, and then link to instructions for making a Big Mac.
This is exactly what I mean. Anyone can express opinions the way they want to. Anyone taking action on some of these opinions may constitute crimes. Repeat again: expressing opinions - not a crime; acting on opinions to kill someone, commit murders, etc. - definitely a crime. That's the distinction.
In such cases, you would obviously be conspiring with the Internet at large in an attempt to cause mortal harm to Bill Gates. A year in federal prison is far too lenient a punishment.
I don't know where this came from. Unless I materially assisted the killer to commit his crime (the Internet at large? eh?) I did not commit a crime - it's just speech and expression of opinions. Take another example - a lot of people thought and still think OJ Simpson deserves a death penalty. They think he should die because he committed murders. These people will give you evidence on why he is a bad guy, how he committed murders, and exactly what methods are used to kill people on death row. They will literally describe to you what to do to put him to death, and link to all kinds of websites and other information about it. Now, if someone chooses to act on the opinions of these people and kill OJ Simpson the same way they have described it, then the only person responsible for crime is the person who committed it. In no way, are the people expressing opinions responsible for them, at least in the U.S., at least that's what the Constitution says.
He specifically admitted that his purpose for posting the links was a VIOLENT one.
I agreed with you up to this point, but this is simply nonsense. If I say or write that Bill Gates deserves to have his head cut off, it would be a violent statement, but it is free speech. And Bill Gates can say same about me as well, not that he would care.
Inciting others to riot is an offense any way you look at it...
Nope. If I tell you to go ahead and kill Bill Gates, and you, without being paid, forced, or otherwise coerced, chose to go ahead and commit murder, you would be a criminal, not me. In the same way, If I told you to go riot in front of White House on July 4, and you chose to do it voluntarily, it is your fault, not mine.
All that being said, the whole debate about legality, free speech, civil rights, etc. is a moot point - the 'gentleman' in question VOLUNTARILY gave up his right to a trial and plead guilty, so none of those questions could ever be addressed in a court of law. The punishment is based on what he plead guilty to, not the legitimacy of the charges. What did you expect the judge to do, force him in to a trial?
First, the judge sentenced him to 1 year, when the plea bargain was for only 4 months.
Second, here I was thinking that prosecution was about justice, not tilting, spinning, or threatening in any way so that they get a confession and a deal from a person government simply doesn't like or agree with.
Third, he was arrested for disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly in New York with few others. I don't know all the facts but it seems like if the government doesn't like you, they can label you a terrorist and then they are free to do pretty much as they please. This is definitely unfair.
Actually, what it most likely proved is that SCO lacks the cash to fight wars on all fronts simultaneously. Not that I think they can prove ANYTHING except they are crooked and the US legal system sucks in that it protects crooks...
Well, it's both, and they are related. Not only is it that SCO can't afford to fight such lawsuit in Germany, I believe it is more important that they can't afford to lose it. As little as I know about German court system, I know that it is not as "forgiving" as it is in the U.S, to put it more nicely. Plus, that would set a deadly precedent to the U.S. "campaign" they have planned. And, of course, we agree that there are more special interests involved in this campaign other than - and more important than - SCO.
Now, if SCO believed they had a legitimate claim in protecting their IP, I am assuming it would have been relatively easy to avoid the restraining order in Germany. Having done so, that would reinforce, as little as it may have been, the rest of their claims. As it is though, making outrageous claims against Linux distributors and users which they have no intention of defending is spreading FUD at best.
All the more reasons to see them sued in every county in every US state, and in 50 other countries...
I wouldn't be surprised if SCO just did what it did in Germany in every other country - shut up. In the U.S. (or even UK), however, at least a partial victory could be blown out of proportion resulting in even more FUD. Remember, there are a lot more strings that the involved special interests can pull at home than abroad.
I was thinking earlier today how cool it would be if SuSe were to sue SCO in Germany...
Except that LinuxTag already hit SCO with this type of lawsuit in Germany couple of months ago. SCO had to shut down their German website and retract all claims made against Linux. Quote from the article:
With its unsubstantiated claims, SCO is hurting competitors, intimidating Linux customers, and inflicting damage on the reputation of Linux as an open platform, said LinuxTag spokesman Andreas Gebhard. "We told SCO flat out they must stop claiming that the standard Linux kernel violates its copyrights if they can't prove it."
Guess which route SCO took in Germany. Of course they didn't elect to prove anything. This should tell everyone how much FUD their current "campaign" really is.
The only set of benchmarks/comparisons I'd respect is a side by side setup. One side has MS's lackies fiddiling with thier server to tune the heck out of it. The other side would have the folks from MySQL*, Apache, RedHat*, and probably ESR for good luck. Then some independant testing machine connected to both doing the same task. (i.e. an actual demo transaction). Why hasn't anyone done something like that?
Because MS would be against revealing any benchmarking results that do not go to their favor, especially the ones that involve Linux or any software running on Linux. They will do their tuning and testing at home, where they have complete control of the outcome of the "test" and then engage marketing and sales with the exciting data.
Offer a free/pay-per-use wireless hotspot. This is especially good for tourists to check their e-mails, browse web, IM, etc. without needing a terminal. It wouldn't cost a lot to operate and would attract more customers to purchase other products or services from you.
Dev 2: "But why? We've been ignoring the 'Mozilla is too bloated' crowd for years, why bother to change now?"
Dev 1: "Don't you see? Even though we're using the post-1.0 code we already have, we can consider the separate browser and mail components to be _new programs_...."
Dev 2: "You mean... we can start them at version 0.1!"
I figure by the time they get to 1.0, it will be bloated just the same as Mozilla is now anyway. Should we expect another "restart" after that?
I so wish I could support some open-source-collaborative browser, but Mozilla and its spinoffs (like Firebird) seem to be the only alternative -and I don't happen to agree at all with the direction the browser development is going. Seemingly they (and most of the/.ing folks) are content with that direction, however, so I see no hope of them changing it, either.
I agree with you. My bigger problem, however, is that I don't quite understand what it is they are trying to achieve with the Mozilla effort. They change their objectives around more often than necessary, not small ones, but big and visible ones. I am not so sure that their current plan will stay in place 1-2 years down the road. I hope they make up their minds and stick to it. Most people don't like surprises like that.
I currently use Opera7 on both Linux and Windows, mostly because it's completely spiffy (small(er), fast, fully functional (popup blocks, cookie controls), comes with a great mail program and on top of that it's elegant.)
I use Konqueror for mostly same reasons (and since I don't deal with win32 platforms anymore). KHTML is slick, fast, standards-compliant, stable and very good at rendering IE-only websites. With Apple putting even more work in KHTML, this is only going to get better. It will take yet another major change in Mozilla project to convince me to switch back from Konqueror.
I'd be interested in knowing if there're any more or less mature open-sourced alternatives for me out there -heck, if need be, I can even put in some work on it:P
How about porting KHTML and implementing frontend for win32? Something like this to build on?
Hmm... I think it'd be interesting to combine this idea with an earlier poster's idea of including a bootable Linux CD with the game - just boot from the CD and play. Obvious disadvantage being that getting back to your "normal" mode would include a reboot.
Now if hardware allowed running multiple OSes then you could run wild with your imagination... but that's an x86 flaw.
They make one huge point that I've been waiting for someone to make aloud: "Disable the "sharing" or "uploading" features on your P2P application that allow other users on the network to get copies of files from your computer or scan any of your music directories.
This is not a solution to anything. If most or great portion of P2P users disabled file sharing the network will become mostly useless, and RIAA would be able to go after smaller portion of users who do enable file sharing. It would be so hard to find anything that less and less people will use it. This, is in fact, what RIAA wants - they want for this P2P thing to just disappear.
A better way for everyone would be to just share what you have a legal right to share. Contact your local bands, find music that's available with one of the freely shareable licenses - there are plenty, and there are a lot of ways of finding them too (keep reading responses to this article). Of course, most of it will not be "good" and you will not like it - it's the same with RIAA music as well. But you will find and keep finding music that you do like a lot. If majority of people did that, that would spell death to RIAA faster than you can say "Britney Spears". That's what I hope RIAA will get out of this - people sharing what they have legal rights to share.
But, of course, none of the above is going to happen - it's more likely that it will stay the way it is until "government by the people" shoves down more unfair legislation down people's throats to preserve their campaign contributions.
There's no way to be sure that it's necessarily Windows that causes the crash; it could be some badly installed rogue software, viruses, crappy system administration, or all of the above. Though no doubt the reflexive Microsoft bashers will blame Microsoft anyway.
I am sure Microsoft can easily determine what applications crash from the crash report. I am also fairly sure that Bill Gates is not going to include some "kiddie shareware" app crashes in his remarks to annual corporate meeting to financial analysts. But the article was not clear whether MS-related crashes, Windows-related crashes, hardware/driver-related crashes, or all crashes were included in the figure.
Also, it is of great importance that these "crash reports" are fairly new. Even though I've seen a person using MS Outlook and MS Office XP crash one of those apps every couple of hours (losing unsaved changes), most will probably agree that later Windows and other MS applications are more stable than earlier releases. This does eliminate a great share of (Win9x, NT, ME, etc.) users.
The above combined with the fact that a lot of users will have (a) error reporting turned off, (b) not send all/any error reports, (c) unable to send error reports due to system crash, or (c) not have an internet connection, or be online at the moment to send the report leads me to believe that if the 5% figure is strictly taken out of the database, then it does not represent the reality.
On the other hand, this 5% figure may not be a dumb value, and may have been adjusted to above and related factors. Either way you argue, it is pure speculation.
As an artist myself, I would be a little POed if the next Millie Vanillie decided to rip a hit or a rift from a song of mine without asking. The EFF's position on this does nothing but take AWAY my rights as a musical artist....
The rights of one do not cancel out the rights of another. And in these situations the "right" has to belong to the original creator, not the follow-on users.
I am not sure what "rights" you are talking about here. After you have released/sold your music or your creation to public you don't have any [related] rights except copyright. There are no other god-like "rights" that you, the creator, have over users of your creation. I.e. you cannot tell them to use your music one way, and not the other, as long as they don't violate your copyright.
Please, don't try to tell me that it's every Joe's right to use my music for their own personal gain.
You may want to pick better words, because you do sound like RIAA. You're damn right every Joe's right to use your music for anything or any way they please, as long as they don't violate your copyright.
No, you have 30 days to start watching it, but once you do, only 24 hours to watch it.
I am just curious, what would it take to give it the wrong time?
Does it check for a system time? That would be pretty easy, you could even have a daemon/service running that would set the system time accrodingly, depending on what movie you'd like to watch and tracking when you downloaded it.
Does it access some server on the Internet to get time? As long as the protocol is not encrypted, you could re-route those requests to a local service/daemon as well.
Would this be illegal under DMCA? I wouldn't think so since checking for time to be able to *watch* a movie is not dealing with copyrights. Any ideas? Experiences?
Disclaimer to the DoJ lawyers and prosecutors: This post is simply asking about technology and experience of users for informational purposes. This discussion is not intended to manufacture, distribute, or in any way encourage use of copy-protection circumvention devices or any related technology.
Slashdot Mirror
Nonsense. Your freedom of speech does not guarantee anything in the private sector. I.e. it does not guarantee your employment contract, your image, your customers, others' opinions about you, or others' actions taken based on opinions expressed from your free speech. In other words, you may well express bad opinions about your employer, but your employer does not have to keep employing you as their salesperson, or spokesperson. Your may badmouth your customers, but they don't have to keep paying for your product or service. What you said is very wrong on so many levels, most of all that your free speech right would trump others' free speech and other rights as well.
It is obvious if you read the U.S. Constitution (the document you are referring to) that it refers to Government's actions to censor free speech, not your private life.
Nobody has suggested killing a messenger, the article simply identified the problem with the "drop-off". If you insist, however, I have another option on how to handle these messengers, and of course, it involves the infamous "there ought to be a law":
Everyone knows that wireless services are an open network for illegal transactions such as bad movie reviews that are in direct contradiction with the carefullly crafted advertisements and previews from the MPAA. This is costing the movie industry lost revenues and wasted advertizing dollars. Here are the numbers:
1. There are over 6 billion people in the world;
2. Half of all population will have a cell phone by 2005 - that's 3 billion people;
2. At least 1 in every 3 people sends a text message to a friend per day, that's 1 billion text messages a day;
3. Naturally, we assume that all those text messages are bad movie reviews so that's 1 billion bad movie reviews a day;
4. At an average worldwide ticket price of $5 per show, movie industry is losing $5 billion per day!!!
5. There ought to be a law to make these ill-conceived activities illegal that cause legitimate, and fairly marketed products fail so miserably.
I propose a Digital Movie Critics Act (DMCA) that will mandate that all wireless providers monitor all text or multimedia messaging transmissions between their subscribers. In the case that they detect a bad movie review being transmitted, or a negative comment made on any MPAA product without authorization, the case with all personal information of the subscriber will be reported directly to MPAA for further investigation.
Based on the goodwill of MPAA, if they determine that an illegal act has been committed, they will be able to recover damages from each individual violator. Damages will be set as follows: from $500 up to $150,000 per incident, depending on the advertizing cost of the movie being critiqued and/or up to 5 years imprisonment per incident. Wireless service provider will be required to terminate the subscriber's service.
This is a typical - "if pigs had wings [insert your agenda here]" - argument. In fact, comparing different industries like that is misleading at the very least. As another example, let's compare airplane manufacturers and fashion industry manufacturers. You would agree that if Boeing were to move or outsource its Everett factory and a large part of their corporate office to China, it would generate more public scrutiny than fashion manufacturers doing the same. Substitute fashion with semiconductors, software, most household items you buy at the store and you'll see comparing "accountability" between industries yields a very large spectrum from none to complete.
Now, you can argue that software makers need to be accountable to public but a blanket comparison to automobile or pharmaceutical industries is not supporting that argument, rather, demonstrating its fallacy. Software industry does not need to be "accountable" only because auto and airplane industries are. Rather, the question is what public good will this imposed larger "accountability" bring? And what will be drawbacks?
As I see it:
Pros:
1. lawyers are able to sue software manufacturers for just about every bug found;
2. illusion of "safe and secure" software.
Note: I am not sure these are pros.
Cons:
1. entry barrier raised (legal and financial);
2. big corporations get special treatment, small companies suffer;
3. mandatory hardware encryption (mandated by corps and/or gov't);
4. Free software gone (both from legal and economic factors - see item 1);
5. reinforcing monopoly power in the industry, oligopoly/cartel at best;
6. driving out competition in PC hardware market.
You see, until someone argues what public good larger software industry "accountability" will bring and how, I fail to see the legitimacy for its comparison to other industries.
I agree here. As it stands right now, by their own practices Apple has set their own market share ceiling at about 5%. I don't see how this will change unless they make drastic changes, everything else being equal. And that is the key. Of course, if some legislation created under "larger accountability" banner, as its byproduct, forms MS-Apple cartel on consumer software market then your analysis will kick in. As it is now, Apple, MS, and others do have to compete against each other, and that is good news.
That's true, but most companies are not monopolies in their respective industries. There are many examples of companies acting similar to MS. In fact, all monopolies are good examples. Take a look at the history of oil industry and telecommunica
There seem to be differing opinions on what could the range of these transmitters be, or what methods could best be used to activate the transmission. Even if we assume that the range is very short, one can still do sufficient tracking in the entrances to public places such as sporting events, concerts, gov't and other important buildings, airports, shopping malls, etc. Could you be refused entry, service, or be subject to a full search if the resulting information determines your threat level to be yellow, or red? That's what is happening in the airports right now. If you get pulled over by a police officer when you are driving is that a probable cause for him to have access to all information obtained through scanning your RFID transmitters? Even if you had an option to voluntarily consent to such "search" would you be treated with more suspicion if you didn't? In other words, even assuming the transmitters do not have long range, it is still possible and very feasible to abuse the system.
They already have you beat on this one. Gov't can already access commercial databases without your consent when you purchase an airline ticket and get to the airport. This is a new color-coding system that they assign a color code to each passenger and to their "threat level".
See above. If they do it to the airline industry, they can extend it to other industries as well. E.g. they can get your threat level before you enter a railroad station, public parade area, football game, concert, etc.
They could equip FBI, local police, and maybe even security guards with such devices - I don't see a problem here. As far as privacy concerns - yes there are and will/would be a lot, but the attitude that you express doesn't help that. Even with the airline passengers color-coding system, where did these privacy concerns get? Almost nowhere with only one major admission that the gov't will not store your color-coded data for more than certain period of time.
Charities that are accreditted as charitable organizations by the federal gov't could be required to report all RFID tags that they have received or transferred.
Will these types of devices draw us closer to licensing products to you and not selling them? Could it be illegal to sell an object equipped with RFID because it contains someone's IP, plus you'd probably be supporting terrorists? That's a far-fetched, yet interesting thought.
This has already been answered by others. Gov't cannot invade your privacy by tracking your every move and recording it without a probable cause, at least according to the U.S. Constitution anyway. But who's paying attention to that silly thing nowadays?
I totally disagree. I have an AMD Athlon box with GeForce4 on AGP, CD-RW, webcam and bluetooth, among others. All of these devices have been configured by the system. I have had to mess with any of the modules, drivers, compiling, etc. exactly 0 times.
I use SuSE 8.2. If I do put a new hardware in, YaST recognizes it on the next boot and promptly sets it up with a few clicks.
By contrast, I tried setting up the webcam (USB) on my laptop on Windows XP and those "few clicks" landed me nowhere. Camera is recognized but I don't get any picture from it. And, there is no way to uninstall and reinstall whatever the setup installed the first time around.
The hardware support is pretty damn good considering all those devices and their accompanying software are made to run mostly exclusively on Windows.
OK... I'll ask you to make a ballpoint pen, just like the ones they sell in packs everywhere. First, I'll ask you to make plastic material - you'll need to make a straw and the outside cover of the pen and mold it in shape; then you'll have to make ink that you will fill the plastic straw with; then you'll need to get [whatever] metal they use to make ballpoint and make it so it fits perfectly without leaking in the plastic straw; all this while making sure the straw and ballpoint also fit in perfectly with the outside plastic cover; oh... and make sure it is comfortable when I pick it up and write with it too.
For all this... I give you... $.10. What you say?
Seriously, the USPS rates may be cheap or reasonable, but that's not the way to show it. In fact, it just ignores simple principles. Obviously, the more pens you make, or the more letters you handle, that $.37 becomes a better deal. On top of that, USPS is a regulated monopoly. And when you take that into account also, then it's your judgement has to be made up from economics of the service vs. public good it provides and possible competition/business it eliminates. Just don't shell out with - if you think USPS is expensive, go deliver this letter cheaper yourself - type of story.
Actually, they mostly used Solaris as stated by this ZDNet article.
This is exactly what I mean. Anyone can express opinions the way they want to. Anyone taking action on some of these opinions may constitute crimes. Repeat again: expressing opinions - not a crime; acting on opinions to kill someone, commit murders, etc. - definitely a crime. That's the distinction.
I don't know where this came from. Unless I materially assisted the killer to commit his crime (the Internet at large? eh?) I did not commit a crime - it's just speech and expression of opinions. Take another example - a lot of people thought and still think OJ Simpson deserves a death penalty. They think he should die because he committed murders. These people will give you evidence on why he is a bad guy, how he committed murders, and exactly what methods are used to kill people on death row. They will literally describe to you what to do to put him to death, and link to all kinds of websites and other information about it. Now, if someone chooses to act on the opinions of these people and kill OJ Simpson the same way they have described it, then the only person responsible for crime is the person who committed it. In no way, are the people expressing opinions responsible for them, at least in the U.S., at least that's what the Constitution says.
I agreed with you up to this point, but this is simply nonsense. If I say or write that Bill Gates deserves to have his head cut off, it would be a violent statement, but it is free speech. And Bill Gates can say same about me as well, not that he would care.
Nope. If I tell you to go ahead and kill Bill Gates, and you, without being paid, forced, or otherwise coerced, chose to go ahead and commit murder, you would be a criminal, not me. In the same way, If I told you to go riot in front of White House on July 4, and you chose to do it voluntarily, it is your fault, not mine.
First, the judge sentenced him to 1 year, when the plea bargain was for only 4 months.
Second, here I was thinking that prosecution was about justice, not tilting, spinning, or threatening in any way so that they get a confession and a deal from a person government simply doesn't like or agree with.
Third, he was arrested for disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly in New York with few others. I don't know all the facts but it seems like if the government doesn't like you, they can label you a terrorist and then they are free to do pretty much as they please. This is definitely unfair.
Well, it's both, and they are related. Not only is it that SCO can't afford to fight such lawsuit in Germany, I believe it is more important that they can't afford to lose it. As little as I know about German court system, I know that it is not as "forgiving" as it is in the U.S, to put it more nicely. Plus, that would set a deadly precedent to the U.S. "campaign" they have planned. And, of course, we agree that there are more special interests involved in this campaign other than - and more important than - SCO.
Now, if SCO believed they had a legitimate claim in protecting their IP, I am assuming it would have been relatively easy to avoid the restraining order in Germany. Having done so, that would reinforce, as little as it may have been, the rest of their claims. As it is though, making outrageous claims against Linux distributors and users which they have no intention of defending is spreading FUD at best.
I wouldn't be surprised if SCO just did what it did in Germany in every other country - shut up. In the U.S. (or even UK), however, at least a partial victory could be blown out of proportion resulting in even more FUD. Remember, there are a lot more strings that the involved special interests can pull at home than abroad.
Except that LinuxTag already hit SCO with this type of lawsuit in Germany couple of months ago. SCO had to shut down their German website and retract all claims made against Linux. Quote from the article:
With its unsubstantiated claims, SCO is hurting competitors, intimidating Linux customers, and inflicting damage on the reputation of Linux as an open platform, said LinuxTag spokesman Andreas Gebhard. "We told SCO flat out they must stop claiming that the standard Linux kernel violates its copyrights if they can't prove it."
Guess which route SCO took in Germany. Of course they didn't elect to prove anything. This should tell everyone how much FUD their current "campaign" really is.
Allowing Little Brother to watch your every move - billions of dollars in taxes
Allowing Big Brother to watch your every move - 100s of billions of dollars in taxes
Knowing that any 3-letter agency can monitor your kids in the kindergarten for suspicion of "terrorism" - Priceless!!!
Because MS would be against revealing any benchmarking results that do not go to their favor, especially the ones that involve Linux or any software running on Linux. They will do their tuning and testing at home, where they have complete control of the outcome of the "test" and then engage marketing and sales with the exciting data.
It seems like someone just started reading Isaac Asimov at Microsoft. Wait until they get through the book.
Offer a free/pay-per-use wireless hotspot. This is especially good for tourists to check their e-mails, browse web, IM, etc. without needing a terminal. It wouldn't cost a lot to operate and would attract more customers to purchase other products or services from you.
I figure by the time they get to 1.0, it will be bloated just the same as Mozilla is now anyway. Should we expect another "restart" after that?
I agree with you. My bigger problem, however, is that I don't quite understand what it is they are trying to achieve with the Mozilla effort. They change their objectives around more often than necessary, not small ones, but big and visible ones. I am not so sure that their current plan will stay in place 1-2 years down the road. I hope they make up their minds and stick to it. Most people don't like surprises like that.
I use Konqueror for mostly same reasons (and since I don't deal with win32 platforms anymore). KHTML is slick, fast, standards-compliant, stable and very good at rendering IE-only websites. With Apple putting even more work in KHTML, this is only going to get better. It will take yet another major change in Mozilla project to convince me to switch back from Konqueror.
How about porting KHTML and implementing frontend for win32? Something like this to build on?
Hmm... I think it'd be interesting to combine this idea with an earlier poster's idea of including a bootable Linux CD with the game - just boot from the CD and play. Obvious disadvantage being that getting back to your "normal" mode would include a reboot.
Now if hardware allowed running multiple OSes then you could run wild with your imagination... but that's an x86 flaw.
Fine troll, but I'll bite.
How about you read the whole reply? Trolls don't do that, usually that is. And they tend to post as ACs as well.
This is not a solution to anything. If most or great portion of P2P users disabled file sharing the network will become mostly useless, and RIAA would be able to go after smaller portion of users who do enable file sharing. It would be so hard to find anything that less and less people will use it. This, is in fact, what RIAA wants - they want for this P2P thing to just disappear.
A better way for everyone would be to just share what you have a legal right to share. Contact your local bands, find music that's available with one of the freely shareable licenses - there are plenty, and there are a lot of ways of finding them too (keep reading responses to this article). Of course, most of it will not be "good" and you will not like it - it's the same with RIAA music as well. But you will find and keep finding music that you do like a lot. If majority of people did that, that would spell death to RIAA faster than you can say "Britney Spears". That's what I hope RIAA will get out of this - people sharing what they have legal rights to share.
But, of course, none of the above is going to happen - it's more likely that it will stay the way it is until "government by the people" shoves down more unfair legislation down people's throats to preserve their campaign contributions.
I am sure Microsoft can easily determine what applications crash from the crash report. I am also fairly sure that Bill Gates is not going to include some "kiddie shareware" app crashes in his remarks to annual corporate meeting to financial analysts. But the article was not clear whether MS-related crashes, Windows-related crashes, hardware/driver-related crashes, or all crashes were included in the figure.
Also, it is of great importance that these "crash reports" are fairly new. Even though I've seen a person using MS Outlook and MS Office XP crash one of those apps every couple of hours (losing unsaved changes), most will probably agree that later Windows and other MS applications are more stable than earlier releases. This does eliminate a great share of (Win9x, NT, ME, etc.) users.
The above combined with the fact that a lot of users will have (a) error reporting turned off, (b) not send all/any error reports, (c) unable to send error reports due to system crash, or (c) not have an internet connection, or be online at the moment to send the report leads me to believe that if the 5% figure is strictly taken out of the database, then it does not represent the reality.
On the other hand, this 5% figure may not be a dumb value, and may have been adjusted to above and related factors. Either way you argue, it is pure speculation.
I am not sure what "rights" you are talking about here. After you have released/sold your music or your creation to public you don't have any [related] rights except copyright. There are no other god-like "rights" that you, the creator, have over users of your creation. I.e. you cannot tell them to use your music one way, and not the other, as long as they don't violate your copyright.
You may want to pick better words, because you do sound like RIAA. You're damn right every Joe's right to use your music for anything or any way they please, as long as they don't violate your copyright.
Ughh... My bad, that article (Buy.com's music store: For your IEs only) was about buymusic.com, not movielink.com... My bad.
I am just curious, what would it take to give it the wrong time?
Does it check for a system time? That would be pretty easy, you could even have a daemon/service running that would set the system time accrodingly, depending on what movie you'd like to watch and tracking when you downloaded it.
Does it access some server on the Internet to get time? As long as the protocol is not encrypted, you could re-route those requests to a local service/daemon as well.
Would this be illegal under DMCA? I wouldn't think so since checking for time to be able to *watch* a movie is not dealing with copyrights. Any ideas? Experiences?
Disclaimer to the DoJ lawyers and prosecutors: This post is simply asking about technology and experience of users for informational purposes. This discussion is not intended to manufacture, distribute, or in any way encourage use of copy-protection circumvention devices or any related technology.