Look, I install plenty of software and I always read the entire license agreement, except when it is something generic that I have already read e.g. the GPL.
If you don't want to read it, don't agree to it; take your business elsewhere (such as only use FOSS software under licenses that you have already read). You wouldn't sign a loan contract without reading it, an EULA is exactly the same thing. It is a binding legal contract.
The freedom to enter into a contract is one of the most important fundamental freedoms along with freedom of speech, etc. To impose restrictions on my ability to enter into contracts with other legal persons is infringing on my right to do so.
As others have described in comments on this story, the features in question such as GPS metadata in pictures is actually useful to some people, even though it might be seen as spyware by others. People have the right to give up their privacy, such as GPS data. It can be in their interest to do so.
The fact is that contracts describe very specific details about how an agreement works. It is in both parties interests for the contract not to be vague. To describe an agreement in details requires a longer contract.
You also have a guarantee that if nobody knows who you are, then nobody will want to listen to you or provide you any support.
That depends though, for example on/. I have psuedo-anonymity. Nobody knows who I am, but people can track my posts by my account.
Just because I have the option of posting as AC doesn't mean I should use it all the time, but I still want the right to use it. In the same way that I use electronic money (CCs and internet banking, etc.) for almost all of my transactions, I still want the ability to use cash which is anonymous. Anonymity doesn't solve everything but there are some situations where it is very important.
Anonymity is part of my freedom. I have the right to use it and the right to not.
While debatable; I would personally draw the line at anything provably false or slander that makes provable yet unlikely claims without citation/proof. To censor such things is very much fair. Just because I think other things are morally wrong doesn't make me right about them being morally wrong, so it is not my right to demand them to be censored.
Of course with anonymity networks that are censor resistant, such as FreeNet, there is essentially nothing you can do to stop that anyway.
That is the price that has to be paid to grant anonymity. What does it matter anyway? You don't have to believe the lies and they can't hurt you.
But either doing that takes an enormous pile of accumulated data to mine (something like a database of all person's locations, occupations, typical spelling errors and modes of expression).
You mean like this and this? GPs point is valid provided that the information is available. Sadly, at least to some extent, it is.
This isn't a valid issue. You want to abbrogate their freedom of speech - by preventing them from disagreeing with you - to further yours.
No, I couldn't care less if they disagreed with me and replied to my anonymous postings anonymously themselves. What I do not want is for them to know who I am in real life and then be able to cease to do business with me because of our disagreement.
If I have a guarantee that nobody knows who I am when I say something then it follows that I have a guarantee that nobody can do anything to me because of what I said.
Laws can always protect freedom of speech in real life, but they can't protect you against someone who disagrees with you enough to want to do some damage to you and does so before law enforcement can step in. They also can't stop people not wanting to be your friend or not wanting to do business with you because of your point of view.
Freedom of speech should grant me the right to say anything I like with no consequences to myself, not just from the government. There is nothing you can do to stop people from treating you different in subtle ways if they know what you said and they strongly disagree with you. Therefore, anonymity is the only way to achieve that. If anonymity is not "true" freedom of speech then "true" freedom of speech is impossible to gain. Life isn't perfect, anonymity is the closest thing to freedom that we have.
The internet can be anonymous. Anonymity is very hard to achieve in real life compared to the levels offered by the internet.
Only with true anonymity comes true freedom of speech.
That said, "texting, photo sharing, Facebook, Tiwtter, humble email" are not the most anonymous of the communication methods that the internet offers by far. IMHO If you replace that by "anonymous internet communication" then it is a solid point, otherwise not so much.
Who cares? EMV is FAR more secure than the other methods of CC payments, most notably buying online with nothing more than the information displayed on the card in full view of the customers (or hidden cameras) next to you. For this exploit to work in the real world, the criminals must already have the card. If they already have the card they can easily withdraw money in other methods.
So EMV is flawed? It is by no means the weakest link. If EMV was 100% secure, CCs would still be just as insecure as they are now.
9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions
of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will
be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program
specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any
later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions
either of that version or of any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of
this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software
Foundation.
They can copy the Linux kernel which they can acquire at GPLv2 and then give it out (modified or not) as GPLv3 and those who receive it from them can only use it under the license they received it in, or a newer version. If they want an earlier version of the license then they must find someone willing to give them a copy with an earlier version attached.
In short, the GPL is forwards compatible not backwards compatible.
You need to get a/. subscription and type your post before the story goes "live". That way you can press the submit button the second it does.:)
Of course I wouldn't do that myself, I don't want to lose my precious karma.
Why didn't Google put a clause in the manufacturer/provider contract "The user will always be allowed full access to the device being managed by this operating system"
Um perhaps because Android, being a linux distro, is under the GPL which does not allow them to add additional terms? This could of course be fixed by requiring GPLv3 but that comes with it's own problems.
Even open source programs that are intended to run on multiple platforms suffer from developers fixing stuff for theirs and unintentionally breaking stuff on other platforms. If you've ever done it, you know it's actually a major issue unless you write very good code without shortcuts/optimizations or you write in an interpreted language.
I agree, but as I said if they have written it correctly. Any recent Windows software should already be written for both x86 and x64. That alone should remove most portability related bugs.
A browser-based application will work even on non-Windows systems. Running a full-blown Office on ARM is going to pose some serious problems. Even Office for Mac or the versions they had for Windows Mobile had major issues and they didn't ever port Visual Basic Script or ActiveX on those platforms. They did rewrite versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint but they were majorly different than their Windows counterparts, even in their layout-engine.
The Silverlight versions of Microsoft Office Web Apps have all the features most consumers would be using anyway.
Mac is a complelty different platform to Windows. Same goes for Windows Mobile, it's not really Windows at all. Windows on ARM is quite similiar to Windows on x86, especially in terms of the API.
Also all programs written in.NET should automatically be compatible without recompiling..NET has been touted as an interpreted language but I haven't seen even a single concept where it runs on other platforms. A lot of.NET applications still have legacy Win32 in it somewhere and even the libraries are very closely linked to Win32. Besides, JIT has never been very good in.NET, I wouldn't give it much better chances on the classically less powerful ARM chips.
Probably this is because Microsoft only has an implementation of.NET that runs on Windows. Mono works fine on Linux and OS X.
As for being tied to Win32 you are probably refering to System.Windows.Forms which is mostly just wrappers for Win32 code with a few bits of syntax sugar. Mono has implemented System.Windows.Forms in it's entirety so any.NET applications that run on Windows using only the built in APIs should run fine on Linux. (With the exception of WPF and a few libraries that are not commonly used). It is quite rare to reference Win32 or COM directly from.NET code.
Personally, I wouldn't have bought those games at larger price.
Same here and it goes for any form of Intellectual Property. Whether it is games, music, software, if they drop the price then I will be willing to pay far more in total for these products that have only fixed development costs.
If I pay $20 for a game and it sucks then I am much less likely to pay for another game than if I only paid something small like $2. If the price per item is negligible then it doesn't really matter if an individual game isn't that great. Give it a poor review and move on.
Windows is portable at it's core though, obviously programs will need to be recompiled for ARM, but if they were written correctly this should not really be much of an issue.
Microsoft should be able to get Office to run on ARM without too much hassle, even then the Microsoft Office Web Apps will still work. There are HTML+Javascript and Silverlight versions of these. Both of which should be able to run on ARM, no problem.
Also all programs written in.NET should automatically be compatible without recompiling.
Can you seriously use a computer with only 100GB of space in this day and age? My Operating System + Programs would alone easily go over that, all legitimately purchased. That doesn't even begin to take into account media that I generate, such as home videos and pictures. With low end consumer cameras having 10 Mega pixels or more, 100GB doesn't really last that long. I'll probably go through 10GB of home media in the Christmas holidays alone, which will probably be kept forever. Multiply the size of that home media by 2 or 3 for backups too.
There are many uses of large hard drives to consumers that are completely legitimate.
What is needed here is that they either get in big trouble for taking part in illegal transactions even if they don't know, or they have to agree to some "common carrier" like status in which they are not allowed to discriminate against any transaction that is legal.
But once something happens to the network and you don't have access to your account, *you* are fucked.
That's precisely why I carry cash with me, only $40. It's been in my wallet for over a year*. Simply for insurance against network failure.
Cash is inconvenient, it's only good as a backup against failure. Now obviously some people are going to be using outdated systems, this is not a strength of cash, it is a weakness in the implementation of electronic currency.
*I have used other cash but that was for the sole purpose of getting rid of it without having to visit the bank to deposit it.
A very large portion of the US Economy is conducted in cash. This is all to track that.
A chip on a note does not magically make it tracked; it can change hands without going through a computer, unlike with credit cards. So tracking would have to be done at particular points, perhaps whenever cash is deposited or withdrawn from a bank.
How hard is it to track using the unique IDs on the notes? Surely an OCR machine is quicker (and cheaper) than something involving electronics on the notes themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, I install plenty of software and I always read the entire license agreement, except when it is something generic that I have already read e.g. the GPL.
If you don't want to read it, don't agree to it; take your business elsewhere (such as only use FOSS software under licenses that you have already read). You wouldn't sign a loan contract without reading it, an EULA is exactly the same thing. It is a binding legal contract.
The freedom to enter into a contract is one of the most important fundamental freedoms along with freedom of speech, etc. To impose restrictions on my ability to enter into contracts with other legal persons is infringing on my right to do so.
As others have described in comments on this story, the features in question such as GPS metadata in pictures is actually useful to some people, even though it might be seen as spyware by others. People have the right to give up their privacy, such as GPS data. It can be in their interest to do so.
The fact is that contracts describe very specific details about how an agreement works. It is in both parties interests for the contract not to be vague. To describe an agreement in details requires a longer contract.
You also have a guarantee that if nobody knows who you are, then nobody will want to listen to you or provide you any support.
That depends though, for example on /. I have psuedo-anonymity. Nobody knows who I am, but people can track my posts by my account.
Just because I have the option of posting as AC doesn't mean I should use it all the time, but I still want the right to use it. In the same way that I use electronic money (CCs and internet banking, etc.) for almost all of my transactions, I still want the ability to use cash which is anonymous. Anonymity doesn't solve everything but there are some situations where it is very important.
Anonymity is part of my freedom. I have the right to use it and the right to not.
Anyone who can read one page can read two (or more) pages. Laziness is not an excuse.
For many contracts one page is not nearly enough to mention everything that needs to be mentioned.
While debatable; I would personally draw the line at anything provably false or slander that makes provable yet unlikely claims without citation/proof. To censor such things is very much fair. Just because I think other things are morally wrong doesn't make me right about them being morally wrong, so it is not my right to demand them to be censored.
Of course with anonymity networks that are censor resistant, such as FreeNet, there is essentially nothing you can do to stop that anyway.
That is the price that has to be paid to grant anonymity. What does it matter anyway? You don't have to believe the lies and they can't hurt you.
But either doing that takes an enormous pile of accumulated data to mine (something like a database of all person's locations, occupations, typical spelling errors and modes of expression).
You mean like this and this? GPs point is valid provided that the information is available. Sadly, at least to some extent, it is.
This isn't a valid issue. You want to abbrogate their freedom of speech - by preventing them from disagreeing with you - to further yours.
No, I couldn't care less if they disagreed with me and replied to my anonymous postings anonymously themselves. What I do not want is for them to know who I am in real life and then be able to cease to do business with me because of our disagreement.
If I have a guarantee that nobody knows who I am when I say something then it follows that I have a guarantee that nobody can do anything to me because of what I said.
Laws can always protect freedom of speech in real life, but they can't protect you against someone who disagrees with you enough to want to do some damage to you and does so before law enforcement can step in. They also can't stop people not wanting to be your friend or not wanting to do business with you because of your point of view.
Freedom of speech should grant me the right to say anything I like with no consequences to myself, not just from the government. There is nothing you can do to stop people from treating you different in subtle ways if they know what you said and they strongly disagree with you. Therefore, anonymity is the only way to achieve that. If anonymity is not "true" freedom of speech then "true" freedom of speech is impossible to gain. Life isn't perfect, anonymity is the closest thing to freedom that we have.
The internet can be anonymous. Anonymity is very hard to achieve in real life compared to the levels offered by the internet.
Only with true anonymity comes true freedom of speech.
That said, "texting, photo sharing, Facebook, Tiwtter, humble email" are not the most anonymous of the communication methods that the internet offers by far. IMHO If you replace that by "anonymous internet communication" then it is a solid point, otherwise not so much.
Who cares? EMV is FAR more secure than the other methods of CC payments, most notably buying online with nothing more than the information displayed on the card in full view of the customers (or hidden cameras) next to you. For this exploit to work in the real world, the criminals must already have the card. If they already have the card they can easily withdraw money in other methods.
So EMV is flawed? It is by no means the weakest link. If EMV was 100% secure, CCs would still be just as insecure as they are now.
9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
Source
They can copy the Linux kernel which they can acquire at GPLv2 and then give it out (modified or not) as GPLv3 and those who receive it from them can only use it under the license they received it in, or a newer version. If they want an earlier version of the license then they must find someone willing to give them a copy with an earlier version attached.
In short, the GPL is forwards compatible not backwards compatible.
You need to get a /. subscription and type your post before the story goes "live". That way you can press the submit button the second it does. :)
Of course I wouldn't do that myself, I don't want to lose my precious karma.
Not necessarily, see this.
Why didn't Google put a clause in the manufacturer/provider contract "The user will always be allowed full access to the device being managed by this operating system"
Um perhaps because Android, being a linux distro, is under the GPL which does not allow them to add additional terms? This could of course be fixed by requiring GPLv3 but that comes with it's own problems.
Maybe Mastercard itself should rethink its business model, since millions of people could start dropping their cards in the street, with $0 liability.
The $0 liability doesn't count if you are careless with the card, much less if you deliberately lose it. Obviously they would have to prove it though.
Even open source programs that are intended to run on multiple platforms suffer from developers fixing stuff for theirs and unintentionally breaking stuff on other platforms. If you've ever done it, you know it's actually a major issue unless you write very good code without shortcuts/optimizations or you write in an interpreted language.
I agree, but as I said if they have written it correctly. Any recent Windows software should already be written for both x86 and x64. That alone should remove most portability related bugs.
A browser-based application will work even on non-Windows systems. Running a full-blown Office on ARM is going to pose some serious problems. Even Office for Mac or the versions they had for Windows Mobile had major issues and they didn't ever port Visual Basic Script or ActiveX on those platforms. They did rewrite versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint but they were majorly different than their Windows counterparts, even in their layout-engine.
The Silverlight versions of Microsoft Office Web Apps have all the features most consumers would be using anyway.
Mac is a complelty different platform to Windows. Same goes for Windows Mobile, it's not really Windows at all. Windows on ARM is quite similiar to Windows on x86, especially in terms of the API.
Also all programs written in .NET should automatically be compatible without recompiling. .NET has been touted as an interpreted language but I haven't seen even a single concept where it runs on other platforms. A lot of .NET applications still have legacy Win32 in it somewhere and even the libraries are very closely linked to Win32. Besides, JIT has never been very good in .NET, I wouldn't give it much better chances on the classically less powerful ARM chips.
Probably this is because Microsoft only has an implementation of .NET that runs on Windows. Mono works fine on Linux and OS X.
As for being tied to Win32 you are probably refering to System.Windows.Forms which is mostly just wrappers for Win32 code with a few bits of syntax sugar. Mono has implemented System.Windows.Forms in it's entirety so any .NET applications that run on Windows using only the built in APIs should run fine on Linux. (With the exception of WPF and a few libraries that are not commonly used). It is quite rare to reference Win32 or COM directly from .NET code.
Personally, I wouldn't have bought those games at larger price.
Same here and it goes for any form of Intellectual Property. Whether it is games, music, software, if they drop the price then I will be willing to pay far more in total for these products that have only fixed development costs.
If I pay $20 for a game and it sucks then I am much less likely to pay for another game than if I only paid something small like $2. If the price per item is negligible then it doesn't really matter if an individual game isn't that great. Give it a poor review and move on.
Windows is portable at it's core though, obviously programs will need to be recompiled for ARM, but if they were written correctly this should not really be much of an issue.
Microsoft should be able to get Office to run on ARM without too much hassle, even then the Microsoft Office Web Apps will still work. There are HTML+Javascript and Silverlight versions of these. Both of which should be able to run on ARM, no problem.
Also all programs written in .NET should automatically be compatible without recompiling.
So would banning computers, your point being?
Can you seriously use a computer with only 100GB of space in this day and age? My Operating System + Programs would alone easily go over that, all legitimately purchased. That doesn't even begin to take into account media that I generate, such as home videos and pictures. With low end consumer cameras having 10 Mega pixels or more, 100GB doesn't really last that long. I'll probably go through 10GB of home media in the Christmas holidays alone, which will probably be kept forever. Multiply the size of that home media by 2 or 3 for backups too.
There are many uses of large hard drives to consumers that are completely legitimate.
Preventing people from accessing a web site prevents other people from reading the content of said site.
/facepalm. I saw the sarcasm in your post just after I pressed the submit button.
I was actually going to do that, but then Visa came and also blocked Wikileaks. There's no one left to replace them with.
And no Amex, Diners, etc. aren't "real" credit cards. They aren't accepted in places I want to buy from.
can I claim that I am merely helping someone create a backup inside the cloud
Sure. But you aren't planning to abuse your backup for illegal playing purposes are you? Just as a backup, right?
Isn't it illegal for MasterCard to knowingly take part in illegal transactions anyway?
This is hardly "internet police", this is common sense.
Anyway, if MasterCard is so bad you can go to the other vendor. Although when they both block something legal, this can cause problems.
What is needed here is that they either get in big trouble for taking part in illegal transactions even if they don't know, or they have to agree to some "common carrier" like status in which they are not allowed to discriminate against any transaction that is legal.
But once something happens to the network and you don't have access to your account, *you* are fucked.
That's precisely why I carry cash with me, only $40. It's been in my wallet for over a year*. Simply for insurance against network failure.
Cash is inconvenient, it's only good as a backup against failure. Now obviously some people are going to be using outdated systems, this is not a strength of cash, it is a weakness in the implementation of electronic currency.
*I have used other cash but that was for the sole purpose of getting rid of it without having to visit the bank to deposit it.
A very large portion of the US Economy is conducted in cash. This is all to track that.
A chip on a note does not magically make it tracked; it can change hands without going through a computer, unlike with credit cards. So tracking would have to be done at particular points, perhaps whenever cash is deposited or withdrawn from a bank.
How hard is it to track using the unique IDs on the notes? Surely an OCR machine is quicker (and cheaper) than something involving electronics on the notes themselves.