I suspect the reason everyone is now as you say "pro-patent" is that the patent itself is a reasonable one, more or less exemplifying a "proper" patent. What most Slashdotters (myself included) tend to hate are patents for software or idiotically simple things, or both. When someone patents hyperlinking, or some general idea like that, that's stupid, but when someone goes and invents a novel technology which is capable of making wireless connections run five times as fast, damn right they can patent that, and damn right they can have their $4. Also, to be fair it's an advantage that it's the CSIRO, so you know they're a genuine inventor, not out to bludgeon a profit and sue people to make a buck, like so many companies which go and buy patents in the hope of shaking down companies.
Quite simply, it's that here is a textbook case of a well-meaning organisation developing a genuine technology, and simply asking for their fair and reasonable compensation for it. That's why I, and presumably most others here, support it.
Is a burger from McDonalds the same as a burger from a fancy restaurant?
I hate to break it to you, but if the "fancy restaraunt" you've been eating at serves burgers, chances are you aren't eating at a fancy restaraunt.
Seriously though, I suspect the real issue is more likely one of taxation and price than quality. While I'm sure there's a few people after some hard-to-find drop, let's face it, most people will probably do it because it's cheaper, and most states will want to prevent it because it is almost surely costing them a bundle in liquor taxes. Simple as that.
That's handing control of the licencing of your code over to whoever is allowed to write GPLv1851, if I'm reading it correctly.
That's partially true, but you're not actually realising the true reason. Let's say that you realease your wizz-bang GPL project under GPLv2, then after you stop giving a damn about it, and most of the rest of the world starts using GPLv3, including all the major FSF projects, suddenly your code would be licence-incomatible with all the new code out there. Since your licence doesn't allow its redistribution under GPLv3, the new programs can't use your code (defeating half the point of F/OSS), and nobody can update your code using code from those GPLv3 projects, since they can't devolve that code back to GPLv2.
So basically, the real reason for that clause isn't to force you to always use their latest GPL, it's to ensure that source code will always be able to be shared between all GPL users.
Hahaha, as much as it's bragging, I have to admit I'm the guy who actually sent a picture in to the IOCCC of my forehead reporting that I had a tattoo on 1994/smr on my forehead since long before that Thomas Scovell guy got his tattoo. Nothing beats being told by the IOCCC that you've done an "excellent hack", and I didn't need to write a line of code!
I sure hate child porn, but I hate GODDAM bureaucracy more. Yea guys, another law, just what the world needs....
Can I be the first to give this a big "WTF!?". Much as I share your dislike for bereaucracy, how can you possibly state that you dislike government meddling more than the you dislike the trading of images and video of child molestation and rape? I don't know about you, but I hate the child rape more...
Good! you sound like an enlightened and informed person. I have a question then. If a person gives a note of permission (with signiture) that a person can use his/her card, are you allowed to accept it? What about permission over phone or if the last names are the same (son/daughter)? I would assume that there must be some way to allow someone else to use my credit card if I so wished. I often lend money with my credit card to friends with on-line purchases, but what if I want to lend my card to my family?
Well, over the phone no way in hell, it could be anyone on the other end of the line. Actual phone orders are different since they're getting delivered somewhere so we know where you're going to be if you're ripping us off. Having the same last name won't be enough either, it could just as easily be your son or another relative stealing your card, or just someone else with a similar name, and you'd be perfectly entitled to chargeback any such transaction. A signed letter of authority will generally be acceptable, since then we have a signature to prove you authorised the transaction, which is all we'd have anyway even if you were buying in person (at least, I know we accept them for store cards, I've never had someone ask about third party cards but I think it's okay). Of course, I know it's not all that hard to forge a signature, but at least we have something tangible to show the purchase is authorised to prevent people claiming they didn't authorise the purchase down the track, and we can always try calling the cardholder if there are doubts. Of course, these are only the rules at my store, and we even have some wiggle room in applying them (if we want to take the chance on a normally unacceptable authorisation, it's our money on the line).
It works because all that is required is that the *kind* of damage be forseeable, not the exact nature. Since I'm Australian I don't know that much US law, but I know of one classic Commonwealth case where it was found that it was forseeable that a person might suffer burns from a negligently placed oil lantern falling, and therefore even more burns suffered by the victim when that lantern fell and caused an explosion (it fell down a manhole, causing a methane explosion) could also be sued for, even though it was accepted that the actual explosion itself may not have been forseeable, since it was considered in this case to be of a similar enough nature. So even though actually being raped may not be forseeable, if it is forseeable that you are exposing someone to an increased hazard of crime, then it would be enough to cover any rapes that may occur.
'scuse me for asking the obvious question, but how come the staff at safeway/etc didn't notice that this guy was using his mother's card?...if credit cards had a photo of the owner upon them, then (in some cases) this kinda stuff could be prevented (because--correct me if i'm wrong, i live in the uk and ccards may work differently in the usa--this kid should not have been able/allowed to use his mother's credit card in the first place)
I'd have thought the bigger giveaway is that his name was "Mrs....". I work in retail, since I'm still at university, and I was specifically told to look for that as a sign of an obviously stolen card. As a side note, while you'd think nobody would be dumb enough to try it, I did actually catch two credit card thieves about two years ago who did exactly this, coming in with a woman's credit card (both of them got arrested, you'd think that even idiots like them would know to run when I start making phone calls).
Taking your rationale a little further, one could argue that people should be required to have a license to procreate, and soon, you're putting the "id10ts" on a train and sending them to camps somewhere.
Getting to put all the id10ts on a train and sending them to concentration camps? I'd vote for that!
He wasn't using the Konami code, I'm pretty sure that up-down-left-right-a-b-select-start was the cheat code for Sonic the Hedgehog (from memory you had to hold some of the last few buttons down at the same time).
When calculating prison sentences, if the person has already been held on remand prior to and during trial then that time will be considered part of their punishment. While admittedly one year does seem an exceptionally long time, it's at least a possibility that he has been in remand that long, and that's why he'll be eligible for parole at that time.
Maybe Im misreading you, if you meant pay or not pay (and hence not recieve), then you left out one option: get it without paying (eg pirate).
Just be sure that whatever option you choose you're ready for the consquences. (eg, loosing money vs. a 1/100,000,000 chance of getting sued+possible (depending upon the person) moral uncertanty).
I don't see how that really changes the ethical issues. You seem to be saying "well you could break the law, it's an option, therefore it's okay". Correct me if I'm reading it wrong, but that could be used to justify just about any breach of the law: "I could get a job and have money, or I could not have money, or I could rob someone and take a 1% chance of getting arrested". Sure, you're correct, I left out the option, but it doesn't affect my argument in the slightest, that if you willingly pay $13 for a movie, you clearly think it's worth it, or you wouldn't go (and no, just because your girlfriend wants to see it doesn't make it duress, you're going because you think not pissing off your girlfriend is worth the money then), and on the other hand if you don't go, then the movie companies can't have ripped you off. The point of my argument was to show under both sets of circumstances, you haven't been robbed by the movie companies, and I don't think anyone could possibly suggest they could have robbed you in the third option, when it's you stealing their movie.
You can't copyright the flavor of the icecream which makes your argument moot. Monopolies destroy the markey, copyright started as a time limited monopoly, but effectively gone now.
Again, completely wrong. Patents give monopolies, copyrights don't.
There's nothing stopping you going out and making another movie about the Titanic, another war movie, another cop movie, another really bad Hugh Grant chick flick, or any other kind of movie you want. Sure, you can't copy the exact movie, but that's simply because in essence that would be like stealing the ice cream itself, skipping the entire cost and effort required to produce it in the first place. No matter how you put it, there's nothing stopping you from going and making your own near-identical movie (within reason), so there certainly isn't a monopoly by any margin.
By charging $13 (in NZ) for a ticket and $3 for a poxy single-scoop ice cream!
Well, if you're going and paying that, you must think it's worth it. If you're not going, well, then you clearly haven't been robbed of anything at all. Besides, $13NZ for movies which can cost tens of millions of times that to produce is hardly unreasonable. Nor is $40NZ for a DVD, and the simple fact it is illegal so complaining "how dare they accuse me of being a criminal" when you pirate the movie is rediculous, since you quite simply are a criminal for it.
I should add the note here that I do have a number of downloaded movies off the internet, so I'm certainly not passing moral judgment on people for doing that, since it'd be simply hypocritical. What pisses me off isn't people who download copyrighted material, it's people who are self-righteous about it, convinced they have a god-given right to do so, and think any copyright owner who dares try to stop them is evil for doing so. If I got busted for piracy, sure I'd be pissed off, but I wouldn't think it unfair, any more than I'd be annoyed at getting a traffic ticket for driving 10kph over the speed limit, it's annoying, but a fair cop.
They just want to steal more money from more people.
Fill me in here in case I missed something, but how are the movie theaters stealing money from anyone? I mean, at least you can claim (however implausibly) that stealing music is okay because the companies make rediculous margins and rip off the artists. That doesn't even remotely apply to movie studios though, it's not like actors are underpaid (in fact, I understand they have a very strong union), and the amount they charge customers is far less relatively speaking. I mean, paying a few bucks to see a $200million movie isn't a bad deal.
So to reiterate my question, how are the movie companies stealing your money?
WTF is so bad about a paper trail? Actually, a paper trail can *increase* the chances of some kinds of fraud, particularly extortion or vote-buying. If there's a verifiable piece of paper you get to keep then it's possible for you to be forced to vote for a certain candidate ("go in there and bring back a receipt showing you voted for X, or else we'll firebomb your home" or suchlike), something totally impossible right now. That's not to mention that such a receipt would be nearly useless, since you can hardly call everyone back to show who they voted for.
Of course, while a receipt-type piece of paper is pretty much self-defeating, it should be said that a good middle-ground of a paper ballot left at the place of voting would work (effectively just as we do it now). Either way, don't rush to assume that simply printing something on a piece of paper will act as a cure-all.
what do you think would happen if Bush got 500,000,000 votes in the state of Montana?:)
Well, I suspect what would happen would be that there would be a huge outroar, the Montana state courts would immediately nullify the election result...
...then the Supreme Court would rule this was illegal and hand Bush the election (again)...
Well, that's why you should join the disthpcc project, distributed compiling for your calculator! Using a network of 200 calculators, it'll be done in under a week! Though no solution for KDE running slow just yet...
Here in Australia we have a loser pays system, and it works fine. Only reasonable costs may be reclaimed, so it's not like Microsoft could say "we hired 500 lawyers for your minor case, so you owe us $20 million". While I don't know the exact figures, lawyers aren't exactly cheap here either, so I don't think the cost of lawyers in the US would be so much more that it would break the system.
Also, it's not a strict loser pays system, but rather there is a discretion for judges. While the default is that the loser pays "party/party costs" (normally ends up being about 80% of the loser's costs), it's entirely possible for a judge to order both parties pay their own costs, or that the winner pay the loser's costs in particularly extreme cases. In particularly blatant abuses of process, the judge can also order "indemnity costs", in which case the loser pays basically the full costs of the winner. Again, it works here, so I don't see why it wouldn't work for the US.
While I may be a CS major, the "vote selling" argument is more real than you think. I'm told that in Italian elections there have been known instances of fraud where people have been coerced or bribed into voting for specific candidates. Admittedly, the actual way in which the fraud worked was to have someone on the inside steal a ballot paper before the election. The cheating party would then fill out the paper, and give it to the person going in to vote, who must then pocket the blank ballot they have been given, and put the pre-completed ballot in the ballot box. That way by bringing out a blank ballot they can prove they must have deposited the other ballot, and the cheater on the outside has another blank ballot to do it all over again.
I'm sure by now you're saying "wait, this has nothing to do with receipts", and you're more or less right, this kind of cheating can be done without receipts, but there are two points which must be made. Firstly, this just goes to show that people DO attempt to cheat at elections, and so that it is a genuine risk which must be averted. Secondly, without a receipt, this kind of cheating is imperfect, for example it seems to me that an individual voter could just say he made a mistake, hand in his ballot (the pre-completed one), and get a new blank, but given an actual receipt, there would be no avoiding this.
I did a bit of checking, and I found my source for this at http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=154354 6&lastnode_id=124, in an everything2 writeup by someone who has actually worked as an italian election official. Apparently now that camera phones are becoming available, they're being used to effectively make "receipts" by photographing ballots. Though again, this kind of cheating would still be vulnerable to just asking for a new ballot, but adding receipts would make it unavoidable.
Because he follows good Slashdot netiquette by posting any no-reg links or full text copies as AC, not for copyright reasons, but because it means mods can mod it up for all to see without the posting user claiming some huge number of mod points they have not really "earned". In other words, he's posted as AC because he's not a karma whore.
While this is all a bit moot now that my original post is basically invisible, I'm not a "plainly annoyed American", for the simple reason I'm not an American. I live on the ass-end of the internet (ie Australia), which while better off than Macedonia is hardly the land of milk and bandwidth.
I'm perfectly willing to read pieces which contain opinions, if anything it's a good thing, but there's a difference between a news article which also gives an opinion, and articles like this which are little more than one person's rant. In other words, it's not the presence of an opinion that's the problem, it's the lack of content.
Just a note to whoever modded my parent post "flamebait", while you're perfectly entitled to do so, this post was my genuine opinion and not just a troll. I found the article to be lacking in content and overflowing with inadequately justified claims, simple as that.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite simply, it's that here is a textbook case of a well-meaning organisation developing a genuine technology, and simply asking for their fair and reasonable compensation for it. That's why I, and presumably most others here, support it.
I hate to break it to you, but if the "fancy restaraunt" you've been eating at serves burgers, chances are you aren't eating at a fancy restaraunt.
Seriously though, I suspect the real issue is more likely one of taxation and price than quality. While I'm sure there's a few people after some hard-to-find drop, let's face it, most people will probably do it because it's cheaper, and most states will want to prevent it because it is almost surely costing them a bundle in liquor taxes. Simple as that.
That's partially true, but you're not actually realising the true reason. Let's say that you realease your wizz-bang GPL project under GPLv2, then after you stop giving a damn about it, and most of the rest of the world starts using GPLv3, including all the major FSF projects, suddenly your code would be licence-incomatible with all the new code out there. Since your licence doesn't allow its redistribution under GPLv3, the new programs can't use your code (defeating half the point of F/OSS), and nobody can update your code using code from those GPLv3 projects, since they can't devolve that code back to GPLv2.
So basically, the real reason for that clause isn't to force you to always use their latest GPL, it's to ensure that source code will always be able to be shared between all GPL users.
Hahaha, as much as it's bragging, I have to admit I'm the guy who actually sent a picture in to the IOCCC of my forehead reporting that I had a tattoo on 1994/smr on my forehead since long before that Thomas Scovell guy got his tattoo. Nothing beats being told by the IOCCC that you've done an "excellent hack", and I didn't need to write a line of code!
Can I be the first to give this a big "WTF!?". Much as I share your dislike for bereaucracy, how can you possibly state that you dislike government meddling more than the you dislike the trading of images and video of child molestation and rape? I don't know about you, but I hate the child rape more...
Yes, though IANAL (yet).
Good! you sound like an enlightened and informed person. I have a question then. If a person gives a note of permission (with signiture) that a person can use his/her card, are you allowed to accept it? What about permission over phone or if the last names are the same (son/daughter)?
I would assume that there must be some way to allow someone else to use my credit card if I so wished. I often lend money with my credit card to friends with on-line purchases, but what if I want to lend my card to my family?
Well, over the phone no way in hell, it could be anyone on the other end of the line. Actual phone orders are different since they're getting delivered somewhere so we know where you're going to be if you're ripping us off. Having the same last name won't be enough either, it could just as easily be your son or another relative stealing your card, or just someone else with a similar name, and you'd be perfectly entitled to chargeback any such transaction. A signed letter of authority will generally be acceptable, since then we have a signature to prove you authorised the transaction, which is all we'd have anyway even if you were buying in person (at least, I know we accept them for store cards, I've never had someone ask about third party cards but I think it's okay). Of course, I know it's not all that hard to forge a signature, but at least we have something tangible to show the purchase is authorised to prevent people claiming they didn't authorise the purchase down the track, and we can always try calling the cardholder if there are doubts. Of course, these are only the rules at my store, and we even have some wiggle room in applying them (if we want to take the chance on a normally unacceptable authorisation, it's our money on the line).
It works because all that is required is that the *kind* of damage be forseeable, not the exact nature. Since I'm Australian I don't know that much US law, but I know of one classic Commonwealth case where it was found that it was forseeable that a person might suffer burns from a negligently placed oil lantern falling, and therefore even more burns suffered by the victim when that lantern fell and caused an explosion (it fell down a manhole, causing a methane explosion) could also be sued for, even though it was accepted that the actual explosion itself may not have been forseeable, since it was considered in this case to be of a similar enough nature. So even though actually being raped may not be forseeable, if it is forseeable that you are exposing someone to an increased hazard of crime, then it would be enough to cover any rapes that may occur.
I'd have thought the bigger giveaway is that his name was "Mrs ....". I work in retail, since I'm still at university, and I was specifically told to look for that as a sign of an obviously stolen card. As a side note, while you'd think nobody would be dumb enough to try it, I did actually catch two credit card thieves about two years ago who did exactly this, coming in with a woman's credit card (both of them got arrested, you'd think that even idiots like them would know to run when I start making phone calls).
Getting to put all the id10ts on a train and sending them to concentration camps? I'd vote for that!
He wasn't using the Konami code, I'm pretty sure that up-down-left-right-a-b-select-start was the cheat code for Sonic the Hedgehog (from memory you had to hold some of the last few buttons down at the same time).
When calculating prison sentences, if the person has already been held on remand prior to and during trial then that time will be considered part of their punishment. While admittedly one year does seem an exceptionally long time, it's at least a possibility that he has been in remand that long, and that's why he'll be eligible for parole at that time.
I don't see how that really changes the ethical issues. You seem to be saying "well you could break the law, it's an option, therefore it's okay". Correct me if I'm reading it wrong, but that could be used to justify just about any breach of the law: "I could get a job and have money, or I could not have money, or I could rob someone and take a 1% chance of getting arrested". Sure, you're correct, I left out the option, but it doesn't affect my argument in the slightest, that if you willingly pay $13 for a movie, you clearly think it's worth it, or you wouldn't go (and no, just because your girlfriend wants to see it doesn't make it duress, you're going because you think not pissing off your girlfriend is worth the money then), and on the other hand if you don't go, then the movie companies can't have ripped you off. The point of my argument was to show under both sets of circumstances, you haven't been robbed by the movie companies, and I don't think anyone could possibly suggest they could have robbed you in the third option, when it's you stealing their movie.
Again, completely wrong. Patents give monopolies, copyrights don't.
There's nothing stopping you going out and making another movie about the Titanic, another war movie, another cop movie, another really bad Hugh Grant chick flick, or any other kind of movie you want. Sure, you can't copy the exact movie, but that's simply because in essence that would be like stealing the ice cream itself, skipping the entire cost and effort required to produce it in the first place. No matter how you put it, there's nothing stopping you from going and making your own near-identical movie (within reason), so there certainly isn't a monopoly by any margin.
Well, if you're going and paying that, you must think it's worth it. If you're not going, well, then you clearly haven't been robbed of anything at all. Besides, $13NZ for movies which can cost tens of millions of times that to produce is hardly unreasonable. Nor is $40NZ for a DVD, and the simple fact it is illegal so complaining "how dare they accuse me of being a criminal" when you pirate the movie is rediculous, since you quite simply are a criminal for it.
I should add the note here that I do have a number of downloaded movies off the internet, so I'm certainly not passing moral judgment on people for doing that, since it'd be simply hypocritical. What pisses me off isn't people who download copyrighted material, it's people who are self-righteous about it, convinced they have a god-given right to do so, and think any copyright owner who dares try to stop them is evil for doing so. If I got busted for piracy, sure I'd be pissed off, but I wouldn't think it unfair, any more than I'd be annoyed at getting a traffic ticket for driving 10kph over the speed limit, it's annoying, but a fair cop.
Fill me in here in case I missed something, but how are the movie theaters stealing money from anyone? I mean, at least you can claim (however implausibly) that stealing music is okay because the companies make rediculous margins and rip off the artists. That doesn't even remotely apply to movie studios though, it's not like actors are underpaid (in fact, I understand they have a very strong union), and the amount they charge customers is far less relatively speaking. I mean, paying a few bucks to see a $200million movie isn't a bad deal.
So to reiterate my question, how are the movie companies stealing your money?
Actually, a paper trail can *increase* the chances of some kinds of fraud, particularly extortion or vote-buying. If there's a verifiable piece of paper you get to keep then it's possible for you to be forced to vote for a certain candidate ("go in there and bring back a receipt showing you voted for X, or else we'll firebomb your home" or suchlike), something totally impossible right now. That's not to mention that such a receipt would be nearly useless, since you can hardly call everyone back to show who they voted for.
Of course, while a receipt-type piece of paper is pretty much self-defeating, it should be said that a good middle-ground of a paper ballot left at the place of voting would work (effectively just as we do it now). Either way, don't rush to assume that simply printing something on a piece of paper will act as a cure-all.
Well, I suspect what would happen would be that there would be a huge outroar, the Montana state courts would immediately nullify the election result...
...then the Supreme Court would rule this was illegal and hand Bush the election (again)...
Well, that's why you should join the disthpcc project, distributed compiling for your calculator! Using a network of 200 calculators, it'll be done in under a week! Though no solution for KDE running slow just yet...
#mknod /dev/uspto p /dev/uspto
#yes >
Congratulations, now you can just read the results of *latest stupid patent application here* by reading a line from /dev/uspto.
Also, it's not a strict loser pays system, but rather there is a discretion for judges. While the default is that the loser pays "party/party costs" (normally ends up being about 80% of the loser's costs), it's entirely possible for a judge to order both parties pay their own costs, or that the winner pay the loser's costs in particularly extreme cases. In particularly blatant abuses of process, the judge can also order "indemnity costs", in which case the loser pays basically the full costs of the winner. Again, it works here, so I don't see why it wouldn't work for the US.
I'm sure by now you're saying "wait, this has nothing to do with receipts", and you're more or less right, this kind of cheating can be done without receipts, but there are two points which must be made. Firstly, this just goes to show that people DO attempt to cheat at elections, and so that it is a genuine risk which must be averted. Secondly, without a receipt, this kind of cheating is imperfect, for example it seems to me that an individual voter could just say he made a mistake, hand in his ballot (the pre-completed one), and get a new blank, but given an actual receipt, there would be no avoiding this.
4 6&lastnode_id=124, in an everything2 writeup by someone who has actually worked as an italian election official. Apparently now that camera phones are becoming available, they're being used to effectively make "receipts" by photographing ballots. Though again, this kind of cheating would still be vulnerable to just asking for a new ballot, but adding receipts would make it unavoidable.
I did a bit of checking, and I found my source for this at http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=15435
Because he follows good Slashdot netiquette by posting any no-reg links or full text copies as AC, not for copyright reasons, but because it means mods can mod it up for all to see without the posting user claiming some huge number of mod points they have not really "earned". In other words, he's posted as AC because he's not a karma whore.
I'm perfectly willing to read pieces which contain opinions, if anything it's a good thing, but there's a difference between a news article which also gives an opinion, and articles like this which are little more than one person's rant. In other words, it's not the presence of an opinion that's the problem, it's the lack of content.
Just a note to whoever modded my parent post "flamebait", while you're perfectly entitled to do so, this post was my genuine opinion and not just a troll. I found the article to be lacking in content and overflowing with inadequately justified claims, simple as that.