Ah, it would seem that in truth, it's only for electrical safety guidelines, kind of like when the UL requires a recall for faulty/dangerous components
To my knowledge, UL does not enforce recalls. They merely release public notices like these bulletins and the respective government agencies, retailers and redistributors take action from there.
don't remember the relevant standard numbers for consumer electronics
There is not just one, there are many, many standards for different types of electronics. UL 1950 and UL 60950 cover a good percentage of computer and computer-based equipment. Of course, many types of consumer electronics have their own individual standards. You can browse all of UL's standards and the scope of each standard on their website, but the actual text and requirements of the standards is not available online.
The ironical thing about this is that the future of OSS software is actually *more* secure than anything the closed-source industry could create. MYSQL AB may be sold, and even the MYSQL trademark can be sold. However, MYSQL the database cannot be destroyed by Oracle(except by submarining software patent holders). The loss of the MYSQL trademark to Oracle means only that any fork must have a new name(maybe OURSQL?).
Can the same be said of Oracle? If Oracle falls apart tomorrow due to some massive accounting fraud being publicized, where does that leave all the current Oracle users?
What if your CRM breaks, who will fix it? What if your Installed Base records are cracked via remote exploit, who can help you?
OSS is not susceptible to the failure of any specific company, it can survive.
Common Carrier only applies to voiceband. And BellSouth wants to avoid being saddled with these regulations.
This is false. Common Carrier status indeed applies to ISP's. They are in fact *asking* to be recognized as a Common Carrier because this extricates them from any liability in the RIAA's crusade against music listeners. In fact, they've claimed Common Carrier status since Bill Clinton passed the anti-pornography legislation stating that they aren't responsible because they don't know what's going through their network, they're just the data router silly!
They cannot maintain Common Carrier status under the FCC's rules as soon as they start routing traffic using information above the Network layer(in OSI model-speak, that's layer 3) to determine routing priority or guaranteed packet delivery. I fear their lawyers may not understand enough about the technology to realize the implications of this fact.
If they lose Common Carrier status, they face liability from the RIAA, because if they are evaluating the data on their network, they should or could have known that they were enabling people to break copyright laws. They also may face liability from other entities as well.
As much as I hate Bellsouth, this will have very bad consequences for them and that's not something I want to see.
I'm not afraid of some script kiddies who want to pwnzer thousands of computers. They primarily use those for sending spam and DDoS attacks. I already get so much spam that it wouldn't matter. And if my computer suddenly starting using lots of bandwidth, well that would be easy to spot.
I would be more someone who wants to take control of only my computer, because that would be personal and they would likely have very malignant intentions.
Nah, just the opposite. If you tell it a paradox and it explodes, it wasn't capable of coming to a logical conclusion but couldn't understand that no logic can come of paradoxes. If I tell my computer a paradox and it tells me I'm illogical and that paradoxical statements cannot be computed, then I will believe it is the real thing.
I see your concern, and lawmakers may attempt to move in that direction. However, technologies like bittorrent probably cannot be legislated against directly. The media conglomerates will have to attack those who actually participate in the distribution process. Although it is easy to track infringement to a specific IP address, proving that the person who owns the IP address is actually the person engaging in the infringement is difficult as evidenced by the few defendants that have stood up to the RIAA.
Your logic does contain a fallacy. Right now, P2P technologies are one of the driving forces behind widespread broadband deployment and that is not something ISPs are willing to give up. As evidenced by some of their recent attempts to shield their users from the RIAA's legal efforts, some ISPs are realizing the value of protecting their client's anonymity. ISP's currently have common carrier status meaning they are not responsible for the contents of the traffic they carry, this has been upheld by the courts. ISP's do not care what you do with your bandwidth, unless of course you use so much of it(think 'excessive use') that it affects the people around you or begins to degrade the stability of their own network.
As far as college networks, you are probably correct. There are no guarantees that civil courts will find that college networks fall under common carrier provisions(especially private colleges). So they are in a special legal position in that they feel some legal liability to stop copyright infringement, especially when they are aware of what is going down on their networks.
Downloading and owning said software will also be illegal That is highly unlikely as BitTorrent is a 'stupid' protocol in that it doesn't decipher/alter the data it is designed to transmit. If the BitTorrent protocol could be made illegal, then why not HTTP or SSL? SSL is only used by terrorists, you know... (sarcasm)
Programs like DeCSS used for copyright infringement that have been attacked were not covered only by the Copyright Act(which actually didn't seem to have an issue with DeCSS because it could be used for fair use), but they were covered also by DMCA which is a whole other beast. With BitTorrent, I can send you an ISO of a CSS encrypted movie and it still doesn't fall under the DMCA because I haven't decrypted it for you.
As you can see from this example, BitTorrent cannot be made illegal without significant changes to the laws governing your privledges. Notice I didn't call them rights, fair use is a privledge provided by the Copyright Act but with one amendment it could be removed. Even the most pro-corporate legislators won't do that, that would be political suicide of unimaginable proportions. So, I don't think BitTorrent software or the BT protocol are going anywhere. The media companies will have to attack the users of the software for specific acts of infringement, not just the technology itself. The fact that it's open source only means it's that much more resilient because no one can take it away from you now.
Kazaa and Grokster were networks. BitTorrent is a technology. Since it's free(in all senses of the word), BitTorrent will go away when it's illegal and not before then. Actually, even then BitTorrent probably won't go away. The fact that trackers are 100% decentralized and don't talk to each other(there is no single, homogenous BT network) means it cannot be shutdown with the legal pressure of a single company attacking another.
They will have to legislate away BT if they want it gone. If that successully happens, we have a lot more to worry about than how to get free porn.
There is one thing you are failing to see. Immortality has been sought after nearly as long as recorded history has existed. References to immortality occur as early as 2500 BC in the Gilgamesh Epic. Humans are unique in the respect that they have a conscious understanding of their own mortality. Although self-preservation can be observed in the majority of the animal kingdom, there is no evidence that any other species has self-awareness of their own mortality.
Among humans, self-preservation is probably the strongest behavior. Yet your statements imply that it is unhealthy for society for individuals to live so long, and that a short lifespan is important? I disagree. The fact that couples today have so many children is a cultural problem, but not one that can be solved by preventing technology advancements that extend the time a person can live. If anything, longer lifespans may reduce overpopulation as people realize that they do not have to reproduce at such an early age so as to avoid their own demise before their children have grown to adulthood.
While I can appreciate the dangers of unfetered technological development, limiting our research to development that falls into a specific and defined set of morals as given to us by religion is counter-productive.
I guess my point is, it's easy to say longer lifespans aren't good when you are young. When you are older, your opinion may not be the same.
Death and Immortality(long, philisophical, good history though)
Well, your example is a red herring. I'm a strong believer in that if such a thing were to happen, you would have really gotten a patent. I have to think that in such a situation, it would be apparent that your new and improved method of making an IC 10 times faster is not obvious or someone would have come up with it already. That's not really the case with computer software. With the rapid advancement in software capability and the fact that most of the software patents out there are apparently not non-obvious ideas, it strikes me as odd that the USPTO would issue so many patents.
It almost seems as though the patent examiners don't actually do anything but stamp it. My god, this is terrible. At least when Amazon got their one-click shopping patent they had a functioning website to back it up. These guys didn't even have that. They decided that it must be a new and novel thing to use a database to correlate phone numbers with used minutes. Freakin duh! Isn't that what databases were designed for?
This company doesn't just deserve to have their patent cancelled, they deserve a good inquisition for anti-competitive behavior.
I think it's interesting that your comment was modded as a Troll when 'Follow the money' is typically an insightful response to any motivation behind large governmental involvement in properly functioning international systems. Be they war, banking, DNS trees, copyright laws, whatever.
Who profits?
Initially, if the EC were to legally require all ISP's operating in the EU to use their local EU-controlled DNS tree, there'd be a huge backlash as people can't get to the favorite US run websites. In reality, this would mean only that current domain name holders would have a *second* entity with which they must register their domain. Since the sale of domain names is big business, it stands to reason that this isn't only about control, it's also about money. This would also encourage more US companies to make Europe-catered websites. This also would bring more money to the EU.
So, yes, this is really about control, but only because it enables them to make more money.
Honestly, I couldn't care less what the article itself says, and that's not what I was talking about. What I would like is for story titles and article summaries to be accurate. I know, I know... that's a lot to ask for around here. Also, while you assume the majority of persons here are 'armchair etc.' or whatever, I think that you might be partially correct but also there are a lot of qualified people who have things to say that don't fit in with groupthink.
Instead of calling me an 'armchair economist', why don't you refute what I'm saying?
Obviously, I haven't RTFA yet... but I hope the article summary is a typo. Wouldn't it make more sense for FTC regulators to get involved when someone sells something below production-cost instead of market value? I mean, selling for something cheaper than your competitor is part of being in a free market. I'd be more concerned if it was being sold at a loss because that is anti-competitive.
No, it's not automatic. The person exporting Autocad to PDF would have to manually sign the document in Acrobat after it's created. While I haven't used Autocad in quite a while, any signature on the Autocad design would be stripped from the document because of the way it is created(virtual printer -} PDF).
There is a limitation to the usefullness of the Adobe self-sign security. There are a huge number of companies out there using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 still. The 'functional improvements' in 6.0 and 7.0 are generally unliked by many corporations and they have not upgraded. Since the new PPKMS signatures created in new acrobat versions cannot be verified using 5.0, that renders those signatures generally useless. Although I can see your point regarding simple tools allowing changes to secured documents(*cough*Word*cough*), but Adobe's signature feature is pretty good.
Exactly. The capitalism part isn't so bad, but the fact that Microsoft has a virtual monopoly means that there is no impetus to change, except by newcomers who threaten their monopoly status. Those are either licensed and assimilated, bought outright , or Microsoft released a similar but incompatible product and uses it's monopolistic influence to bury the newcomer.
This isn't some imagination of mine, this is a fact as determined by a court of law.
Windows is not the work of the devil: it's an operating system
You hit the nail on the head and completely came to the wrong conclusion. The values and principles under which Windows has developed dictate that many problems will go untouched if it is not in Microsoft's best interest. Since their only interest is in keeping the most people on Windows for as long as possible so that their income is maximized, the user's needs will always come second. This is true *always*, to the extent that this impacts the ability of Microsoft to keep users just happy enough to not look for alternatives.
It isn't the work of the devil, but as a whole, it's hard to convince me otherwise. Each employee is just a cog in the wheel... They go to work and do the best that they can, completing the work that is assigned to them. I can't blame the employees for that. But at the end of the day, their actions are destructive to consumers of the computing industry as a whole and I do blame Microsoft management for that. Their greediness(which is legally required) forces them to make decisions that are not in the best interests of their users, and I will NEVER agree with that. If you think I am incorrect, please try reading their IRS filings instead of their press releases. Then you can understand why some people(like myself) are so disenchanted with the company.
An Operating System should be: functional designed in the best interests of the developers and users free(remember, an OS is only supposed to be the middle man between your applications and your hardware) secure
As long as Windows is designed under the umbrella of a capitalistic monopoly, things will continue in the downward slope they started in the 90's.
Hi, I know you were probably just joking, but just as an FYI...
In most countries, anything pre-Berne convention should be deemed as having NOT been copyrighted unless such notice is included in the work. Copyright laws now dictate that copyright is automatic, and in some countries such as the Netherlands, there are even rights that cannot be signed away.
I didn't see any copyright notices on Einstein's papers, and judging by the date they were authored, it is reasonable to conclude that the text of the documents are not protected in any way.
Slashdot Mirror
Not fucking likely. Any judge who requires you to provide a method of incriminating yourself should be disbarred.
Ah, it would seem that in truth, it's only for electrical safety guidelines, kind of like when the UL requires a recall for faulty/dangerous components To my knowledge, UL does not enforce recalls. They merely release public notices like these bulletins and the respective government agencies, retailers and redistributors take action from there. don't remember the relevant standard numbers for consumer electronics There is not just one, there are many, many standards for different types of electronics. UL 1950 and UL 60950 cover a good percentage of computer and computer-based equipment. Of course, many types of consumer electronics have their own individual standards. You can browse all of UL's standards and the scope of each standard on their website, but the actual text and requirements of the standards is not available online.
The ironical thing about this is that the future of OSS software is actually *more* secure than anything the closed-source industry could create. MYSQL AB may be sold, and even the MYSQL trademark can be sold. However, MYSQL the database cannot be destroyed by Oracle(except by submarining software patent holders). The loss of the MYSQL trademark to Oracle means only that any fork must have a new name(maybe OURSQL?).
Can the same be said of Oracle? If Oracle falls apart tomorrow due to some massive accounting fraud being publicized, where does that leave all the current Oracle users?
What if your CRM breaks, who will fix it?
What if your Installed Base records are cracked via remote exploit, who can help you?
OSS is not susceptible to the failure of any specific company, it can survive.
Have you considered the high prices you pay are partially subsidizing internet access for those in rural areas?
Common Carrier only applies to voiceband. And BellSouth wants to avoid being saddled with these regulations.
This is false. Common Carrier status indeed applies to ISP's. They are in fact *asking* to be recognized as a Common Carrier because this extricates them from any liability in the RIAA's crusade against music listeners. In fact, they've claimed Common Carrier status since Bill Clinton passed the anti-pornography legislation stating that they aren't responsible because they don't know what's going through their network, they're just the data router silly!
They cannot maintain Common Carrier status under the FCC's rules as soon as they start routing traffic using information above the Network layer(in OSI model-speak, that's layer 3) to determine routing priority or guaranteed packet delivery. I fear their lawyers may not understand enough about the technology to realize the implications of this fact.
If they lose Common Carrier status, they face liability from the RIAA, because if they are evaluating the data on their network, they should or could have known that they were enabling people to break copyright laws. They also may face liability from other entities as well.
As much as I hate Bellsouth, this will have very bad consequences for them and that's not something I want to see.
~happy Comcast user
I'm not afraid of some script kiddies who want to pwnzer thousands of computers. They primarily use those for sending spam and DDoS attacks. I already get so much spam that it wouldn't matter. And if my computer suddenly starting using lots of bandwidth, well that would be easy to spot.
I would be more someone who wants to take control of only my computer, because that would be personal and they would likely have very malignant intentions.
I don't even run anti-virus software. Never have. Never had a virus either.
How do you know?
A well written virus wouldn't even have symptoms of it's existence... You could have a root-kit right now and not even know.
Neither is really accurate. It's really a combination of cotton fiber and wood pulp.
Nah, just the opposite. If you tell it a paradox and it explodes, it wasn't capable of coming to a logical conclusion but couldn't understand that no logic can come of paradoxes. If I tell my computer a paradox and it tells me I'm illogical and that paradoxical statements cannot be computed, then I will believe it is the real thing.
I see your concern, and lawmakers may attempt to move in that direction. However, technologies like bittorrent probably cannot be legislated against directly. The media conglomerates will have to attack those who actually participate in the distribution process. Although it is easy to track infringement to a specific IP address, proving that the person who owns the IP address is actually the person engaging in the infringement is difficult as evidenced by the few defendants that have stood up to the RIAA.
Your logic does contain a fallacy. Right now, P2P technologies are one of the driving forces behind widespread broadband deployment and that is not something ISPs are willing to give up. As evidenced by some of their recent attempts to shield their users from the RIAA's legal efforts, some ISPs are realizing the value of protecting their client's anonymity. ISP's currently have common carrier status meaning they are not responsible for the contents of the traffic they carry, this has been upheld by the courts. ISP's do not care what you do with your bandwidth, unless of course you use so much of it(think 'excessive use') that it affects the people around you or begins to degrade the stability of their own network.
As far as college networks, you are probably correct. There are no guarantees that civil courts will find that college networks fall under common carrier provisions(especially private colleges). So they are in a special legal position in that they feel some legal liability to stop copyright infringement, especially when they are aware of what is going down on their networks.
Downloading and owning said software will also be illegal
That is highly unlikely as BitTorrent is a 'stupid' protocol in that it doesn't decipher/alter the data it is designed to transmit. If the BitTorrent protocol could be made illegal, then why not HTTP or SSL? SSL is only used by terrorists, you know... (sarcasm)
Programs like DeCSS used for copyright infringement that have been attacked were not covered only by the Copyright Act(which actually didn't seem to have an issue with DeCSS because it could be used for fair use), but they were covered also by DMCA which is a whole other beast. With BitTorrent, I can send you an ISO of a CSS encrypted movie and it still doesn't fall under the DMCA because I haven't decrypted it for you.
As you can see from this example, BitTorrent cannot be made illegal without significant changes to the laws governing your privledges. Notice I didn't call them rights, fair use is a privledge provided by the Copyright Act but with one amendment it could be removed. Even the most pro-corporate legislators won't do that, that would be political suicide of unimaginable proportions. So, I don't think BitTorrent software or the BT protocol are going anywhere. The media companies will have to attack the users of the software for specific acts of infringement, not just the technology itself. The fact that it's open source only means it's that much more resilient because no one can take it away from you now.
Kazaa and Grokster were networks. BitTorrent is a technology. Since it's free(in all senses of the word), BitTorrent will go away when it's illegal and not before then. Actually, even then BitTorrent probably won't go away. The fact that trackers are 100% decentralized and don't talk to each other(there is no single, homogenous BT network) means it cannot be shutdown with the legal pressure of a single company attacking another.
They will have to legislate away BT if they want it gone. If that successully happens, we have a lot more to worry about than how to get free porn.
/.'s ability to bork even the simplest link is astounding. Death and Immortality(long, philisphical, good history though)
There is one thing you are failing to see. Immortality has been sought after nearly as long as recorded history has existed. References to immortality occur as early as 2500 BC in the Gilgamesh Epic. Humans are unique in the respect that they have a conscious understanding of their own mortality. Although self-preservation can be observed in the majority of the animal kingdom, there is no evidence that any other species has self-awareness of their own mortality.
Among humans, self-preservation is probably the strongest behavior. Yet your statements imply that it is unhealthy for society for individuals to live so long, and that a short lifespan is important? I disagree. The fact that couples today have so many children is a cultural problem, but not one that can be solved by preventing technology advancements that extend the time a person can live. If anything, longer lifespans may reduce overpopulation as people realize that they do not have to reproduce at such an early age so as to avoid their own demise before their children have grown to adulthood.
While I can appreciate the dangers of unfetered technological development, limiting our research to development that falls into a specific and defined set of morals as given to us by religion is counter-productive.
I guess my point is, it's easy to say longer lifespans aren't good when you are young. When you are older, your opinion may not be the same.
Death and Immortality(long, philisophical, good history though)
Well, your example is a red herring. I'm a strong believer in that if such a thing were to happen, you would have really gotten a patent. I have to think that in such a situation, it would be apparent that your new and improved method of making an IC 10 times faster is not obvious or someone would have come up with it already. That's not really the case with computer software. With the rapid advancement in software capability and the fact that most of the software patents out there are apparently not non-obvious ideas, it strikes me as odd that the USPTO would issue so many patents.
It almost seems as though the patent examiners don't actually do anything but stamp it. My god, this is terrible. At least when Amazon got their one-click shopping patent they had a functioning website to back it up. These guys didn't even have that. They decided that it must be a new and novel thing to use a database to correlate phone numbers with used minutes. Freakin duh! Isn't that what databases were designed for?
This company doesn't just deserve to have their patent cancelled, they deserve a good inquisition for anti-competitive behavior.
I think it's interesting that your comment was modded as a Troll when 'Follow the money' is typically an insightful response to any motivation behind large governmental involvement in properly functioning international systems. Be they war, banking, DNS trees, copyright laws, whatever.
Who profits?
Initially, if the EC were to legally require all ISP's operating in the EU to use their local EU-controlled DNS tree, there'd be a huge backlash as people can't get to the favorite US run websites. In reality, this would mean only that current domain name holders would have a *second* entity with which they must register their domain. Since the sale of domain names is big business, it stands to reason that this isn't only about control, it's also about money. This would also encourage more US companies to make Europe-catered websites. This also would bring more money to the EU.
So, yes, this is really about control, but only because it enables them to make more money.
Maybe he just likes midgets?
They are light enough to do fun things with...
Honestly, I couldn't care less what the article itself says, and that's not what I was talking about. What I would like is for story titles and article summaries to be accurate. I know, I know... that's a lot to ask for around here. Also, while you assume the majority of persons here are 'armchair etc.' or whatever, I think that you might be partially correct but also there are a lot of qualified people who have things to say that don't fit in with groupthink.
Instead of calling me an 'armchair economist', why don't you refute what I'm saying?
Obviously, I haven't RTFA yet... but I hope the article summary is a typo. Wouldn't it make more sense for FTC regulators to get involved when someone sells something below production-cost instead of market value? I mean, selling for something cheaper than your competitor is part of being in a free market. I'd be more concerned if it was being sold at a loss because that is anti-competitive.
No, it's not automatic. The person exporting Autocad to PDF would have to manually sign the document in Acrobat after it's created. While I haven't used Autocad in quite a while, any signature on the Autocad design would be stripped from the document because of the way it is created(virtual printer -} PDF).
There is a limitation to the usefullness of the Adobe self-sign security. There are a huge number of companies out there using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 still. The 'functional improvements' in 6.0 and 7.0 are generally unliked by many corporations and they have not upgraded. Since the new PPKMS signatures created in new acrobat versions cannot be verified using 5.0, that renders those signatures generally useless. Although I can see your point regarding simple tools allowing changes to secured documents(*cough*Word*cough*), but Adobe's signature feature is pretty good.
Bias is inescapable. You mean to tell me Symantec's stance on browser security reinforces the need for their solutions?
As a corporation, they have a sharp sense of self preservation. Shocking, I say. Dammit, just shocking.
Or you could just become a responsible internet user and fix your computer so you aren't a spambot.
Exactly. The capitalism part isn't so bad, but the fact that Microsoft has a virtual monopoly means that there is no impetus to change, except by newcomers who threaten their monopoly status. Those are either licensed and assimilated, bought outright , or Microsoft released a similar but incompatible product and uses it's monopolistic influence to bury the newcomer.
This isn't some imagination of mine, this is a fact as determined by a court of law.
Windows is not the work of the devil: it's an operating system
You hit the nail on the head and completely came to the wrong conclusion. The values and principles under which Windows has developed dictate that many problems will go untouched if it is not in Microsoft's best interest. Since their only interest is in keeping the most people on Windows for as long as possible so that their income is maximized, the user's needs will always come second. This is true *always*, to the extent that this impacts the ability of Microsoft to keep users just happy enough to not look for alternatives.
It isn't the work of the devil, but as a whole, it's hard to convince me otherwise. Each employee is just a cog in the wheel... They go to work and do the best that they can, completing the work that is assigned to them. I can't blame the employees for that. But at the end of the day, their actions are destructive to consumers of the computing industry as a whole and I do blame Microsoft management for that. Their greediness(which is legally required) forces them to make decisions that are not in the best interests of their users, and I will NEVER agree with that. If you think I am incorrect, please try reading their IRS filings instead of their press releases. Then you can understand why some people(like myself) are so disenchanted with the company.
An Operating System should be:
functional
designed in the best interests of the developers and users
free(remember, an OS is only supposed to be the middle man between your applications and your hardware)
secure
As long as Windows is designed under the umbrella of a capitalistic monopoly, things will continue in the downward slope they started in the 90's.
~ Happy Linux user ~
Hi, I know you were probably just joking, but just as an FYI...
In most countries, anything pre-Berne convention should be deemed as having NOT been copyrighted unless such notice is included in the work. Copyright laws now dictate that copyright is automatic, and in some countries such as the Netherlands, there are even rights that cannot be signed away.
I didn't see any copyright notices on Einstein's papers, and judging by the date they were authored, it is reasonable to conclude that the text of the documents are not protected in any way.