The situation in Europe is somewhat different from what you describe. It's not necessarily true that the losing party needs to pay the costs of the winner, it can be something the court decides as part of the judgement.
In addition in some jurisdictions lawyer's fees are regulated - e.g. they are determined according to the value of the lawsuit. E.g. if the case is about the ownership of a house valued at $100k, then the lawyer's fees are tied to the value of that house. In effect that means that you can roughly calculate the costs of a lawsuit before you sue someone.
As for "superior" or not - I think it's fair to call a system superior when it normally produces better results, it doesn't have to provide better results in 100% of the cases.
GPL is the main one causing problems. BSD, Apache, LGPL, etc. can be used in pretty much anything.
That "problem" is the point - GPL code is not supposed to be used in "pretty much anything". Programmers put their code under the GPL because they want that restriction. If you think they are making the wrong choice you should argue that point - however that's not a license issue, it's an issue of the intention of the programmer.
The trading company might also have given out the address voluntarily (and now doesn't want to admit to that) or it could be a lucky guess of the spammer (maybe a dictionary attack of sorts). I know they used to try use commonly-used nicks on my domain for a while. (Then I turned the catch-all off...)
Another good option would be to use http://sneakemail.com/ You can generate addresses there each time you need to specify an email address - all the mail to these addresses will then be forwarded to your main account. If one of the addresses starts to bring in spam you can just remove it - and you know who caused the problem, too.
Customers are not willing to pay more on the mere chance that the data is more secure. This is a great example of a market not delivering what customers want, because finding out whether one company is better at providing the service than the other, is close to impossible. (I'm joking of course, the market is the only perfect thing in the known universe.)
I tend to disagree. A loudspeaker is a big deal - it's a way for the government to talk to you, to force their views on you, to disturb you - without you even having a chance to talk back. I know in Britain people don't meekly accept whatever a policeman says - in this case however there is no way to respond, no way to say "this is none of your business, I don't care what looks suspicious to you I'm a free man".
Also I would say that it's a violation of privacy to track your movements. If it was done by a private entity you'd call it stalking, which is a violation of the law in many jurisdictions. For a good reason, too - it reduces the quality of your life significantly.
If people WANT to watch local news there WILL be local news, there is no need for a law.
The free market fairy provides? Companies will only provide local news if it's profitable to do so. Whether people want local news is just one factor in this.
Sorry, but you are not actually addressing what I said. I do not propose to abandon copyright law, and DRM is not the same a copyright law. The point is, if (hypothetically) you had a store where you could legally *buy* mp3s, there would be no impact on the availability of mp3s in channels which are not legal. Everything is out there already. It doesn't matter whether people buy from this hypothetical store because they think it's fair to pay for their music, or whether they buy there because they can't figure out the file sharing tools. Putting DRM on their music doesn't change anything in either case. They are either still willing to pay for music, or they are still unable to use file sharing tools.
Sure, music companies "should" just "trust" people not to give it away to everyone, really, they can't.
Well, they could. Not because people are generally good, but because the stuff is already out there. People only buy digital music because they do not want to download it illegally. Lack of opportunity is not an issue.
I think you need a timeout on this - otherwise if you know that you'll receive bad feedback from a buyer, you just never leave any for him and keep your rating good.
I don't particularly like having it happen but I certainly don't draw attention to myself by talking back to agents the way he had.
That's the part which concerns me most, actually. Cause it implies that the search is not made out of genuine concern for security or upholding the law, not because the agent is interested in performing his job well - but because he feels entitled to lord it over innocent people. This is not just humiliating and annoying, but it's also means that instead of doing his job he'll waste his time pursuing personal vendetas. He won't apply his time where he thinks he might find something, but instead spend it to extract respect which he doesn't deserve.
I think that a case can be made that something could be brought onto the plane which could endanger the flight. So checking whether a laptop contains explosives is a reasonable thing to do. There is really nothing reasonable about looking at people's private files without suspicion.
he got nothing that someone who an agent had a feeling about might get.
That might be true, but that's a sad state of affairs. There was no reason for such disrespect.
That sort of thing scares me too. The danger from terrorism is statistically very low, yet it's used as an excuse to place governments above the law. The danger from that is rather high.
Does the fact that DNA can now be manipulated directly really make a difference as to what we're doing?
It's a bit about scale. Thousands of years ago we could still burn down a piece of forest, sowing grain on the ashes, and move on a few years later when the soil was depleted. If we'd continue doing that today, it would kill us. We'd just burn all our forest and lose all our soil. If we'd suddenly switch agricultural plants large-scale all over the world, we have a scenario which differs considerably from selecting grains over hundreds of years.
In the past we have several times introduced species from one environment into another. (E.g. rabbits in Australia.) The result can be harmful. That on it's own doesn't mean that the method is generally invalid. However I don't see any large-scale research in the matter which would provide a means to assess the risk. I'd say that introducing substantially genetically modified species should pose similar risks, though.
And if their unique genetics manages to survive and thrive in the "wild", is that not a simple example of natural selection and an indication of their hardiness?
Yes, of course - good for them. However that would only be relevant if our main concern were e.g. the rabbits in Australia - they are doing fine. Typically our concern is on us, though...;-) So sticking to the example: knowing what we know now, would we rather not have a rabbit pest in Australia?
(Depends whether you like Australians, of course.)
There are many well known objections. While it's perfectly reasonable to argue about those concerns, I don't understand the benefit of playing stupid and pretending they are unknown.
Just a few examples:
increasing the dependency of farmers to big companies
depleting the richness of biotopes
reducing the usage of genetic variant grain strains
I don't think that's why they worked on Linux at all. I think they worked on Linux to make a GPL operating system and to hell with popularity.
I think, that's true for some of the developers, but others very much want it to be popular. Particularly Linus has been fond of stating that he aims for future "world domination" (tongue-in-cheek to be sure). Popularity (and due to that market force) has a considerable impact on rights, as well. If you have (hypothetically) 40% of the market, the fact that you support open standards provides a considerable incentive for people to adhere to these standards, putting documents into these open formats etc. If you only have 2% that incentive is very much smaller. So the popularity of the OS does have an impact on the things you can access using it.
Obviously there is a problem with using ESR's approach. If you allow closed components into your open OS, there are definitely benefits in terms of popularity, however there are also definitely drawbacks as the closed components hinder adoption of open alternatives at least in the short term. So do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, will the drawbacks disappear in the long term, or does this strategy cement the situation which it tries to improve? I think this is the crucial question, though I don't see an easy answer to it. However if you do decide that ESR is right, there is no reason not to consider his proposal.
Any company can pay for licenses for these codecs and put out closed-source Linux binaries and sink or swim in the market.
It's maybe a lost cause to discuss this in a largely American forum - however: the free market is not the tooth fairy. It allows supply and demand to regulate itself, it does not magically make what you desire. Companies decide to enter a certain market because they think they might profit from that. If they don't, you can conclude that apparently the demand is not big enough to drive companies to do that. (Since they haven't you can conclude this right now.) While this may be interesting information, your primary goal is to have the product not to find out why it's not available. If you would like to change that availability you can provide it yourself, and that can cost money.
If you were running a company and find that you absolutely need a certain piece of software which is not available in the market, would you a) conclude that must not really need it, or b) evaluate whether it makes sense to hire someone to write it for you?
Well according to the article the guy made $600,000 a month from illegal activities. So that makes him a big-time crook, and it seems reasonable for AOL to try to get the $12.8 million which they were awarded. I think most people on Slashdot would have some understanding for the RIAA's position if they were going after someone who was illegally producing CDs and making half a million from selling those every month.
Now that the parents of the culprit should have to suffer, is a different matter. They might be entirely innocent and really have no connection to the money. Then again AOL may be right with their suspicions. I hope the judge will come to a fair decision.
Not sure whether that would work - Al-Qaeda seems to have enough resources to circumvent racial profiling. There has already been the case of that shoe bomber, and there was Anne Murphy (that pregnant Irish girl), too.
Its interesting that this idea gets universal acclaim, while software inventions covered by patent are almost universally reviled.
Cause we all have experienced how easy it would be to violate a software patent - just by following the logical course of a certain task. Even worse: nobody is reading patent literature to actually solve a programming problem. The cost of using a patented algorithm would (ususally) be too high, so only free algorithms are actually of value. As a result software patents do nothing to promote progress, and everything to delay it.
The patent in the article is another story. You don't logically arrive at the solution this guy found, just by looking into the details of saw safety - there is something completely original there. While the guy seems to want to charge too much, adaption of his idea could constitute progress. (If it actually works in the field.)
I agree - the question is not whether the future will need more people with business skills to do technical work. The question is - once this mindset is established how will anything get done?
"the most effective workforce will be outward-focused, business-driven competency centers"
People have been spouting that sort of gibberish for a long time - until now big companies have managed to survive despite that, however if it becomes even more widespread than now, they are going to take those companies down.
"They might be competency centers formed around mergers and acquisitions,"
Same thing on that one - mergers and acquisitions are unproductive work. It's stuff people do, because they don't know anything about running their companies, so instead they focus on activities they understand. These activities contribute zero to the economy, though - they are just expensive overhead.
Another myth is this idea that you could somehow escape outsourcing by acquiring a business skill set. That's nonsense, if I can outsource skill set A, I can also outsource skill set B. Once I've outsourced all the engineering jobs to India, and put the infrastructure there, managing these engineers can also be done in India.
Slashdot Mirror
In addition in some jurisdictions lawyer's fees are regulated - e.g. they are determined according to the value of the lawsuit. E.g. if the case is about the ownership of a house valued at $100k, then the lawyer's fees are tied to the value of that house. In effect that means that you can roughly calculate the costs of a lawsuit before you sue someone.
As for "superior" or not - I think it's fair to call a system superior when it normally produces better results, it doesn't have to provide better results in 100% of the cases.
That "problem" is the point - GPL code is not supposed to be used in "pretty much anything". Programmers put their code under the GPL because they want that restriction. If you think they are making the wrong choice you should argue that point - however that's not a license issue, it's an issue of the intention of the programmer.
The trading company might also have given out the address voluntarily (and now doesn't want to admit to that) or it could be a lucky guess of the spammer (maybe a dictionary attack of sorts). I know they used to try use commonly-used nicks on my domain for a while. (Then I turned the catch-all off...)
Another good option would be to use http://sneakemail.com/ You can generate addresses there each time you need to specify an email address - all the mail to these addresses will then be forwarded to your main account. If one of the addresses starts to bring in spam you can just remove it - and you know who caused the problem, too.
Customers are not willing to pay more on the mere chance that the data is more secure. This is a great example of a market not delivering what customers want, because finding out whether one company is better at providing the service than the other, is close to impossible. (I'm joking of course, the market is the only perfect thing in the known universe.)
Also I would say that it's a violation of privacy to track your movements. If it was done by a private entity you'd call it stalking, which is a violation of the law in many jurisdictions. For a good reason, too - it reduces the quality of your life significantly.
The free market fairy provides? Companies will only provide local news if it's profitable to do so. Whether people want local news is just one factor in this.
Well, they could. Not because people are generally good, but because the stuff is already out there. People only buy digital music because they do not want to download it illegally. Lack of opportunity is not an issue.
I think you need a timeout on this - otherwise if you know that you'll receive bad feedback from a buyer, you just never leave any for him and keep your rating good.
That's the part which concerns me most, actually. Cause it implies that the search is not made out of genuine concern for security or upholding the law, not because the agent is interested in performing his job well - but because he feels entitled to lord it over innocent people. This is not just humiliating and annoying, but it's also means that instead of doing his job he'll waste his time pursuing personal vendetas. He won't apply his time where he thinks he might find something, but instead spend it to extract respect which he doesn't deserve.
he got nothing that someone who an agent had a feeling about might get.
That might be true, but that's a sad state of affairs. There was no reason for such disrespect.
That sort of thing scares me too. The danger from terrorism is statistically very low, yet it's used as an excuse to place governments above the law. The danger from that is rather high.
It's a bit about scale. Thousands of years ago we could still burn down a piece of forest, sowing grain on the ashes, and move on a few years later when the soil was depleted. If we'd continue doing that today, it would kill us. We'd just burn all our forest and lose all our soil. If we'd suddenly switch agricultural plants large-scale all over the world, we have a scenario which differs considerably from selecting grains over hundreds of years.
No, there isn't. However that assumption is the scientific main stream. So to claim there was no scientific backing for it seems a little far-fetched.
And if their unique genetics manages to survive and thrive in the "wild", is that not a simple example of natural selection and an indication of their hardiness?
Yes, of course - good for them. However that would only be relevant if our main concern were e.g. the rabbits in Australia - they are doing fine. Typically our concern is on us, though... ;-) So sticking to the example: knowing what we know now, would we rather not have a rabbit pest in Australia?
(Depends whether you like Australians, of course.)
I think, that's true for some of the developers, but others very much want it to be popular. Particularly Linus has been fond of stating that he aims for future "world domination" (tongue-in-cheek to be sure). Popularity (and due to that market force) has a considerable impact on rights, as well. If you have (hypothetically) 40% of the market, the fact that you support open standards provides a considerable incentive for people to adhere to these standards, putting documents into these open formats etc. If you only have 2% that incentive is very much smaller. So the popularity of the OS does have an impact on the things you can access using it.
Obviously there is a problem with using ESR's approach. If you allow closed components into your open OS, there are definitely benefits in terms of popularity, however there are also definitely drawbacks as the closed components hinder adoption of open alternatives at least in the short term. So do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, will the drawbacks disappear in the long term, or does this strategy cement the situation which it tries to improve? I think this is the crucial question, though I don't see an easy answer to it. However if you do decide that ESR is right, there is no reason not to consider his proposal.
Any company can pay for licenses for these codecs and put out closed-source Linux binaries and sink or swim in the market.
It's maybe a lost cause to discuss this in a largely American forum - however: the free market is not the tooth fairy. It allows supply and demand to regulate itself, it does not magically make what you desire. Companies decide to enter a certain market because they think they might profit from that. If they don't, you can conclude that apparently the demand is not big enough to drive companies to do that. (Since they haven't you can conclude this right now.) While this may be interesting information, your primary goal is to have the product not to find out why it's not available. If you would like to change that availability you can provide it yourself, and that can cost money.
If you were running a company and find that you absolutely need a certain piece of software which is not available in the market, would you a) conclude that must not really need it, or b) evaluate whether it makes sense to hire someone to write it for you?
Now that the parents of the culprit should have to suffer, is a different matter. They might be entirely innocent and really have no connection to the money. Then again AOL may be right with their suspicions. I hope the judge will come to a fair decision.
Not sure whether that would work - Al-Qaeda seems to have enough resources to circumvent racial profiling. There has already been the case of that shoe bomber, and there was Anne Murphy (that pregnant Irish girl), too.
Cause we all have experienced how easy it would be to violate a software patent - just by following the logical course of a certain task. Even worse: nobody is reading patent literature to actually solve a programming problem. The cost of using a patented algorithm would (ususally) be too high, so only free algorithms are actually of value. As a result software patents do nothing to promote progress, and everything to delay it.
The patent in the article is another story. You don't logically arrive at the solution this guy found, just by looking into the details of saw safety - there is something completely original there. While the guy seems to want to charge too much, adaption of his idea could constitute progress. (If it actually works in the field.)
I wonder whether they collect the search terms people use on their interface. If so, will they publish them?
What's wrong with them? Bad service?
"the most effective workforce will be outward-focused, business-driven competency centers"
People have been spouting that sort of gibberish for a long time - until now big companies have managed to survive despite that, however if it becomes even more widespread than now, they are going to take those companies down.
"They might be competency centers formed around mergers and acquisitions,"
Same thing on that one - mergers and acquisitions are unproductive work. It's stuff people do, because they don't know anything about running their companies, so instead they focus on activities they understand. These activities contribute zero to the economy, though - they are just expensive overhead.
Another myth is this idea that you could somehow escape outsourcing by acquiring a business skill set. That's nonsense, if I can outsource skill set A, I can also outsource skill set B. Once I've outsourced all the engineering jobs to India, and put the infrastructure there, managing these engineers can also be done in India.
I don't know, but don't they clean the other side - away from the data layer?