Since these are designed to be read by machines, I expect there to be an easy way for a machine to verify that the ballot is valid before I leave. This whole idea that "no one holds your hand when you vote" does not mean that we should encourage a system wherein it is easy to make mistakes, or even possible. This is one case where there is no need for shades of grey or room for interpretation. Make it impossible for an invalid vote to be cast and no one can whine about it. Personally, I don't think the arrangement of the holes on the FL ballot was that confusing, and I would not entertain thoughts of allowing that to hinder closing the election. OTOH, there were 19,000 invalid ballots cast. How is this useful? And why aren't SIMPLE measures taken to ensure that this doesn't happen? If you're going to let fools vote, then make the system foolproof, otherwise let's stop pretending and just have a real monarchy/dictatorship/oligopoly/restricted voting system.
If they were offered replacement ballots, then why didn't they recast them? I'd say that they had no clue that the ballot they'd just cast was invalid and it seems irresponsible to accept invalid ballots. The only possible reason a person would attempt to cast an invalid ballot is in the case where there is no write-in capability, and they want to vote for nobody rather than abstain. Certainly suggesting that they be called back and asked what they wanted to vote is a red herring meant to make it sound like this isn't a simple technical problem -- easily solved by one of several solutions.
Um. There are any number of ways to prevent the sort of problem which plagues the ballots with the punch holes, which is precisely this: more than one hole may be punched, which invalidates that ballot. The extra hole may be the result of misaligning the card in the machine. The extra hole may be the result of mistakenly punching one hole and then mistakenly punching another one (which has the positive effect of nullifying your original mistaken vote, but does not allow you to vote in the affirmative for your actual choice -- and from what I understand the FL voters who punched twice were not offered replacement ballots). The extra hole may be punched after the fact by unethical persons wishing to invalidate your vote for whatever reason. There is no way to prove when or by whom the extra hole was punched or as a result of which error unless no ballots are accepted that have this issue (i.e. a machine reader will not let you leave the polling place without submitting a correctly completed ballot). It is my understanding that there was no such validation of ballots for persons leaving the FL polls, or if the ballots were obviously invalid that they were not replaced.
The best method for combining machine and analog certainties involves using a machine that only allows you one selection, and allows you to change that selection until you press a final "OK" button, which then prints a machine readable receipt, which you then submit to a collection box. The first machine can submit tabulations for instant counting. If there are errors in this process, the receipts can be machine read to quickly replace those results. And if there are severe concerns, or some sort of handcount is needed, there are pieces of paper which humans can look at and verify. This provides anonymity, error correction, and verifiability, nor can I think of a single way to tamper with this type of ballot. Anything less can always be looked at with suspicion.
To respond to this post and to the parent at hopefully one swell foop: Since the physical world is rife with artificial borders created by groups called nations and dependent rarely upon any distinguishable or significant physical boundary nor dependent on any real separative qualities of the persons confined to the geographical space possessed by those boundaries (most nations have at least one ethnic minority), why would you expect a transnational group of infotech "haves" to be able to concert any effort to declare their infotech to be no longer subservient to their individual nation of origin (since they must or want to obey their nation's will in all other matters)?
The best we can hope is that it will become more and more obvious just how artificial those real world national boundaries are, and that rather than regroup along ethnic or ideological splinter lines that all humans will understand their commonalities and work to abolish those sorts of constraints. Once that happens maybe we can talk about independence or freedom as personal liberties and what exactly that will mean for us all as citizens of Earth. Not just on the internet, but in all of life, which is the only way the internet or information will ever be truly free.
Not to mention that consistent use of the words Open Source don't tend to help the case when it might be better to use the words Free Software. Using the acronym OS is much more confusing to the casual reader than FS would be, though. At least the ambiguity of Free Software is somewhat intentional (is it free like no price or is it free like freedom, and how do you have one without the other), whereas simply having an open view of the source code does not give anyone a legal right to tamper with or redistribute the software (with or without modifications). As a primarily non-programmer person, I think using the phrase Free Software is far more relevant to the world at large than using some obscured phrase like Open Source. I mean, only a programmer cares about the Source, but anyone can understand Free-- whether we mean no price or freedom or both. Open Source assumes the average individual even understands the difference between an executable binary and source code and how possession of the latter is of potential benefit. Even so, like the common car (hood welded shut or not) analogy, most of us want a specialist to do the work for us when it comes to serious maintanence.
Maybe they read the FAQ. Maybe they understood it. Maybe they are disappointed that the top story at the time contains a link which is completely useless as posted and feel that this should somehow be remedied, because it lessens the effectiveness of Slashdot. As far as I can tell, stripping the page name away and starting from the raw directory works fine, though.
Great article. One of the things I've liked about the O'Reilly books I've read is the humor and real world attitude (admittedly I've read mostly Perl books, so humor is important in preventing the onset of insanity-- or it may be a symptom of it, I can't tell which). Too bad Feuerstein writes mostly Oracle-specific stuff, since it would be great to read a database book with examples like those! Personally, I think I'd skip right over any chapter about ethics in a book about design principles or practical application. It's appropriate in a college curriculum perhaps to have it as an aside. But the method which includes getting you to think about it WHILE reading the book is excellent.
He may have been a bidder on the item. He may have considered the item to be a legitimate production of GD. He may have been disappointed with his low quality reproduction of a live performance. He may have taken the brown acid.
Very interesting approach, especially like the hack used to obtain population percentages (very efficient relying on the electoral college for those proportions). This whole idea deserves further exploration, especially with regard to the number of votes cast in those states in the election.
This is the most insightful and interesting thing I have read about the presidential election this year. My only request would be that you somehow make available a file with numbers that support this-- not that I disbelieve you, but I think this would be an amazing little document.
Um, I'd have to say that recycling words is a primary foundation of almost any non-fiction writing, including college theses. This is exactly why footnotes, endnotes, bibliographies, and appendices were invented. Plagiarism is the unqualified reuse of others' creative efforts typically with the intent to deceive readers into believing it is your own. If a writer basically rewrote someone else's book with no major changes (i.e. plagiarized it), we would be rightfully disappointed in their complete lack of originality or creative effort. The same applies to programming. I see no indication that programmers are rewarded for reusing code wholesale or for simply rewrapping libraries (except to build interfaces to those libraries for other languages). There is no dichotomy here.
Can they forcibly audit your records or systems? Not without first filing a lawsuit, and then only as part of the discovery process-- which can be very invasive.
Can they levy a fine against you for alleged infractions? Sure. They can do this with or without evidence.
Are you obligated to pay the fine? No. Unless the fine is, in fact, a damages award resulting from a trial or settlement of a lawsuit.
Can they do something awful to you if you refuse to pay the fine or comply with the audit? That depends. I'd personally rather not go to court over this.
Why? Wouldn't this get thrown out in most jurisdictions unless there was strong evidence (i.e. someone has snitched) of wrongdoing? Yes. But the BSA and its members could very legitimately refuse to sell you any further software or licenses. They could also block your IPs from their download sites. You don't have a Constitutional right to buy their software. They can refuse your business.
But this is insane, isn't there something we can do? Yes. Don't buy software that is not Free.
The will of the people is hardly being ignored. The people in America are very closely divided on this particular issue and anyone assuming that a win for either candidate this year is anything more than a close call is mistaken. It's fairly obvious that there is no "will of the people"-- there is significant difference of opinion (insofar as differences are actually allowed by the fearmongering that passes for political activity in this nation). If the people have a serious problem with this, there have been over 200 years in which to rectify the matter through Constitutional amendments, and neither of the two candidates in this election has stated that they care who wins the popular vote and that if elected they will work steadfastly to correct the voting system-- and I guarantee that at no time in the next decade will electoral reform (other than campaign finance) be mentioned by either the Republicans or Democrats. Oddly, the "progressives" like Ralph Nader seem to support abolishing the Electoral College but want to replace it with the just as arcane instant runoff system.
It seems to me that about 50% of the questions received answers from Gore and Bush that put them both in direct contradiction with the current actitivities of the US government.
Most telling is this, though, "Do you believe the internet should be filtered in schools? Yes, Yes." next question: "Do you believe the government should set criteria used to block web sites in schools?" Bush: no answer. Gore: "No." So just who the hell does he expect will decide how to implement the filters he just stated should be used?
Okay. I was wrong. It was not a Gap ad, but a Levi's ad. Other than that, this is the same lawsuit, in which without transcripts it is very hard to tell to what extent any royalties were withheld and under what circumstances. Jello admits in at least two other articles I've read that some royalties went unpaid (although this sounded more like a math problem than anything) and it appears that he would have paid these immediately had there not been this commingled issue of the "failure to promote" the back catalog. It is impossible to tell what portion of the $200K award was related to royalties and which part was related to revenues lost by not accepting the deal from Levi's. This whole case is an excellent example of the complete failure of the intellectual property laws in the US. There is no clear owner to the old DK tunes-- certainly not to the albums as wholes. There was no written business plan around the band, so who has what rights to what becomes pretty grey in this instance. What is obvious is that the US legal system is prepared only to decide oppositional cases and is highly unlikely to work toward any synergistic or creative solution to this problem. I'm surprised that the members of DK haven't figured out a solution like giving everyone a digital master copy of the audio for these albums and forcing everyone to come out with modified cover materials, or to do whatever else they might want (like making a "Best of..." compilation, or selling the rights to certain songs (and since four of them would have the selling rights, this would result in bidding wars:) )). I mean, it's not a black and white case of Jello being a dink and the other guys being screwed. At least that's my take as a long time fan of both DK and Jello's solo work. Certainly I think failing to cash in on the band that wrote the song "Anarchy for Sale" is not a crime, nor suitable grounds for a monetary lawsuit.
I realize that this is somewhat inflammatory, but I feel like it should be asked. I am not a programmer, and have the utmost respect for anyone who is capable of writing something like wine, but: Is that really a loss to the Free Software community? Is there any real use for wine except to run proprietary software under Linux? Does this not further our addiction to proprietary software (most notably that heinosity known as "Office") by reducing the imperative to create Free alternatives? Does this not endanger Free alternatives by extending the marketshare of proprietary applications (in that, Office users can now legitimately carp to Linux users that all work should be done in Office since it runs on wine)?
I think we have a misunderstanding. I quoted the aphorisms to say that the administration is being ineffective in this case (and not following typical adult advice) because it is paying too much attention to a simple prank. Unless you are the young man who set his crown to the field, and this prank was an effective way to bring your plight into view, his act is only tangentially related to your situation. I very much understand the motivation for this stunt on his part, and frankly I approve of it, but it's hardly newsworthy (in my hubristic opinion)-- because there are other much more severe transgressions in our schools being perpetrated by the "popular" kids, or by the administrations themselves. I have plenty sympathy for the way any differently-cast student feels, and think that this prank was fine. The school should have ignored him. As it is, he took a chance and they busted him because they can't possibly understand that sometimes no reaction would be a better move than overreaction. But they hardly deprived him of his civil rights, as the school in Tulsa is doing to the young woman in the story I referenced (a story I would have preferred to see on the front page of Slashdot).
I'd like to see a link to some further information on this "screwed out of royalties" assertion-- even to some crackpot Geocities punk 14-year-old-made web page that starts off with "i heard from somebody who heard from somebody...". Otherwise it's simply rumor-mongering and libelous. The only thing I've heard about a rift between Jello/AT and the other former DK band members is that he refused to release DK songs for use in Gap commercials-- for which they sued him on the grounds that he was unfairly impeding the work and preventing them from cashing in on their success (and this info is available at the AT site). Never mind that providing the soundtrack for a Gap ad runs 180 degrees counter to the spirit of any DK song.
So some kid opposed to the popularity contest that is the homecoming charade pulls a fast one on the school. Suspending him has really rewarded him for this act-- which is one of a number of great reasons for the school to have just let it go. If I recall the aphorisms of my youth correctly, they went something like, "Sticks and stones..." and "Ignore them and they'll go away."
I seriously doubt that someone (Nader) who graduated magna cum laude from Princeton and holds a law degree from Harvard is ignorant of basic economics and clings to any deep-seated class jealousy. This particular notion "tax speculation in the stock market" is way too vague as to be anything but fodder for clarification. It sounds like a capital gains tax to me. After all, how do you tax someone for speculation if they have actually lost money? Maybe they should just apply a national sales tax to the transfer of stock (since it's a sale). Either way, this will not affect investment drastically. Any reduction on investment gain due to taxation is merely to be figured into the return side of the risk equation-- just like it has been for years and years.
I agree. I'm exhausted just trying to separate the real injustices from the whining. This guy didn't defend himself. I still don't have a clue what his problem with Guiness was in the first place. And the whole fiasco says more about the nonsense that is the domain name system (not just the arbitrary arbitration-- witness the Sting and Madonna cases-- the fact is this whole TLD notion is broken, not just the decisioning process), than it does about trademark law and its use or abuse.
Hmmm. That will be just like the junk email I get from mp3.com.
On the business/legal aspects of this move, what they (BMG) have done is actually forego the lawsuit. This partnership appears to involve a great deal of Napster equity being allotted to BMG (whether this is strictly as a security on the loan or whether this is in perpetuity is unclear). I would suspect that the other four major label corporations will somehow join the partnership (i.e. they will also be bribed with an equity position), or that BMG is sufficiently equipped to fight a quick battle about royalties with those companies.
What I don't see is any mention of the following much more difficult questions: who is going to scan the music (currently done by an army of volunteer rippers), what format will the files be (if not mp3, how do they plan to implement this, unlike the switch from vinyl to CD or VHS to DVD, the industry does not have any control over the mp3 format, nor the majority of the tools used to make and play mp3s), how do they expect to store files (these files require serious bandwidth-- will they be continuing to use peer to peer?), if they continue p2p who will the hosting peers be (I certainly wouldn't host files for them without compensation-- at least the current honor system seems to work fairly well), if the files and hosting are done as now who will verify quality and accuracy (if I'm paying for Napster, why would I tolerate incomplete or falsely labeled files), and finally, how do they plan to change any single aspect of their current service without beginning to erode their user base significantly (most of these questions have very possible answers that I suspect will drive away users, and in combination will have an exponential impact-- that is one change drives away one user, but two changes drives away four, etc etc)?
Why not write to their boss, President William Jefferson Clinton, the Chief Executive of the Executive branch of the United States Federal Government (as FBI -> DOJ -> Exec Branch)? I'm sure you'll find that he's a reasonable freedom-loving American who cares deeply about the thoughts, feelings, and basic rights of all Americans (especially those hackers too stupid to stay away cracked sites before an official investigation begins). If he's not too busy renting out rooms or training interns, perhaps he could filter your complaint down to the appropriate supervisorial personnel in the FBI. I know that when I've written to him to express some point of dissatisfaction with the job the Federal Government is doing that he wrote back promptly, with an in-depth explanation of why he thought he was doing everything he possibly could to ignore the obvious solution to the issue at hand. I couldn't have been more pleased, and I think you'll have a similarly good experience!
Or, you could donate money to a group like the ACLU, who spend their time and efforts working in the legal system to address concerns about the erosion of our rights (with the possible exception of the rights that may be granted by Amendment Number Two to the Constitution- but that's got it's own watchdog group). And while the ACLU has a poor reputation because they defend the freedom of people not many other people like, they also do a lot of hard work on cases that just need to be fought (like this one, where a girl was suspended from school for casting a spell on a teacher). They do a lot of work surrounding search and seizure. Especially since some police departments apparently manage to gain considerable revenue by auctioning seized goods.
Slashdot Mirror
Since these are designed to be read by machines, I expect there to be an easy way for a machine to verify that the ballot is valid before I leave. This whole idea that "no one holds your hand when you vote" does not mean that we should encourage a system wherein it is easy to make mistakes, or even possible. This is one case where there is no need for shades of grey or room for interpretation. Make it impossible for an invalid vote to be cast and no one can whine about it. Personally, I don't think the arrangement of the holes on the FL ballot was that confusing, and I would not entertain thoughts of allowing that to hinder closing the election. OTOH, there were 19,000 invalid ballots cast. How is this useful? And why aren't SIMPLE measures taken to ensure that this doesn't happen? If you're going to let fools vote, then make the system foolproof, otherwise let's stop pretending and just have a real monarchy/dictatorship/oligopoly/restricted voting system.
If they were offered replacement ballots, then why didn't they recast them? I'd say that they had no clue that the ballot they'd just cast was invalid and it seems irresponsible to accept invalid ballots. The only possible reason a person would attempt to cast an invalid ballot is in the case where there is no write-in capability, and they want to vote for nobody rather than abstain. Certainly suggesting that they be called back and asked what they wanted to vote is a red herring meant to make it sound like this isn't a simple technical problem -- easily solved by one of several solutions.
You'll get no argument from me on this one. Too bad you posted as AC, since a lot of readers might not see this valuable point.
Um. There are any number of ways to prevent the sort of problem which plagues the ballots with the punch holes, which is precisely this: more than one hole may be punched, which invalidates that ballot. The extra hole may be the result of misaligning the card in the machine. The extra hole may be the result of mistakenly punching one hole and then mistakenly punching another one (which has the positive effect of nullifying your original mistaken vote, but does not allow you to vote in the affirmative for your actual choice -- and from what I understand the FL voters who punched twice were not offered replacement ballots). The extra hole may be punched after the fact by unethical persons wishing to invalidate your vote for whatever reason. There is no way to prove when or by whom the extra hole was punched or as a result of which error unless no ballots are accepted that have this issue (i.e. a machine reader will not let you leave the polling place without submitting a correctly completed ballot). It is my understanding that there was no such validation of ballots for persons leaving the FL polls, or if the ballots were obviously invalid that they were not replaced.
The best method for combining machine and analog certainties involves using a machine that only allows you one selection, and allows you to change that selection until you press a final "OK" button, which then prints a machine readable receipt, which you then submit to a collection box. The first machine can submit tabulations for instant counting. If there are errors in this process, the receipts can be machine read to quickly replace those results. And if there are severe concerns, or some sort of handcount is needed, there are pieces of paper which humans can look at and verify. This provides anonymity, error correction, and verifiability, nor can I think of a single way to tamper with this type of ballot. Anything less can always be looked at with suspicion.
To respond to this post and to the parent at hopefully one swell foop: Since the physical world is rife with artificial borders created by groups called nations and dependent rarely upon any distinguishable or significant physical boundary nor dependent on any real separative qualities of the persons confined to the geographical space possessed by those boundaries (most nations have at least one ethnic minority), why would you expect a transnational group of infotech "haves" to be able to concert any effort to declare their infotech to be no longer subservient to their individual nation of origin (since they must or want to obey their nation's will in all other matters)?
The best we can hope is that it will become more and more obvious just how artificial those real world national boundaries are, and that rather than regroup along ethnic or ideological splinter lines that all humans will understand their commonalities and work to abolish those sorts of constraints. Once that happens maybe we can talk about independence or freedom as personal liberties and what exactly that will mean for us all as citizens of Earth. Not just on the internet, but in all of life, which is the only way the internet or information will ever be truly free.
Not to mention that consistent use of the words Open Source don't tend to help the case when it might be better to use the words Free Software. Using the acronym OS is much more confusing to the casual reader than FS would be, though. At least the ambiguity of Free Software is somewhat intentional (is it free like no price or is it free like freedom, and how do you have one without the other), whereas simply having an open view of the source code does not give anyone a legal right to tamper with or redistribute the software (with or without modifications). As a primarily non-programmer person, I think using the phrase Free Software is far more relevant to the world at large than using some obscured phrase like Open Source. I mean, only a programmer cares about the Source, but anyone can understand Free-- whether we mean no price or freedom or both. Open Source assumes the average individual even understands the difference between an executable binary and source code and how possession of the latter is of potential benefit. Even so, like the common car (hood welded shut or not) analogy, most of us want a specialist to do the work for us when it comes to serious maintanence.
Maybe they read the FAQ. Maybe they understood it. Maybe they are disappointed that the top story at the time contains a link which is completely useless as posted and feel that this should somehow be remedied, because it lessens the effectiveness of Slashdot. As far as I can tell, stripping the page name away and starting from the raw directory works fine, though.
Great article. One of the things I've liked about the O'Reilly books I've read is the humor and real world attitude (admittedly I've read mostly Perl books, so humor is important in preventing the onset of insanity-- or it may be a symptom of it, I can't tell which). Too bad Feuerstein writes mostly Oracle-specific stuff, since it would be great to read a database book with examples like those! Personally, I think I'd skip right over any chapter about ethics in a book about design principles or practical application. It's appropriate in a college curriculum perhaps to have it as an aside. But the method which includes getting you to think about it WHILE reading the book is excellent.
He may have been a bidder on the item. He may have considered the item to be a legitimate production of GD. He may have been disappointed with his low quality reproduction of a live performance. He may have taken the brown acid.
skip the wives in spandex. I had trouble deciding who to vote for in this election because of the daughters. :)
Very interesting approach, especially like the hack used to obtain population percentages (very efficient relying on the electoral college for those proportions). This whole idea deserves further exploration, especially with regard to the number of votes cast in those states in the election.
This is the most insightful and interesting thing I have read about the presidential election this year. My only request would be that you somehow make available a file with numbers that support this-- not that I disbelieve you, but I think this would be an amazing little document.
Um, I'd have to say that recycling words is a primary foundation of almost any non-fiction writing, including college theses. This is exactly why footnotes, endnotes, bibliographies, and appendices were invented. Plagiarism is the unqualified reuse of others' creative efforts typically with the intent to deceive readers into believing it is your own. If a writer basically rewrote someone else's book with no major changes (i.e. plagiarized it), we would be rightfully disappointed in their complete lack of originality or creative effort. The same applies to programming. I see no indication that programmers are rewarded for reusing code wholesale or for simply rewrapping libraries (except to build interfaces to those libraries for other languages). There is no dichotomy here.
Can they raid your offices? No.
Can they forcibly audit your records or systems? Not without first filing a lawsuit, and then only as part of the discovery process-- which can be very invasive.
Can they levy a fine against you for alleged infractions? Sure. They can do this with or without evidence.
Are you obligated to pay the fine? No. Unless the fine is, in fact, a damages award resulting from a trial or settlement of a lawsuit.
Can they do something awful to you if you refuse to pay the fine or comply with the audit? That depends. I'd personally rather not go to court over this.
Why? Wouldn't this get thrown out in most jurisdictions unless there was strong evidence (i.e. someone has snitched) of wrongdoing? Yes. But the BSA and its members could very legitimately refuse to sell you any further software or licenses. They could also block your IPs from their download sites. You don't have a Constitutional right to buy their software. They can refuse your business.
But this is insane, isn't there something we can do? Yes. Don't buy software that is not Free.
The will of the people is hardly being ignored. The people in America are very closely divided on this particular issue and anyone assuming that a win for either candidate this year is anything more than a close call is mistaken. It's fairly obvious that there is no "will of the people"-- there is significant difference of opinion (insofar as differences are actually allowed by the fearmongering that passes for political activity in this nation). If the people have a serious problem with this, there have been over 200 years in which to rectify the matter through Constitutional amendments, and neither of the two candidates in this election has stated that they care who wins the popular vote and that if elected they will work steadfastly to correct the voting system-- and I guarantee that at no time in the next decade will electoral reform (other than campaign finance) be mentioned by either the Republicans or Democrats. Oddly, the "progressives" like Ralph Nader seem to support abolishing the Electoral College but want to replace it with the just as arcane instant runoff system.
It seems to me that about 50% of the questions received answers from Gore and Bush that put them both in direct contradiction with the current actitivities of the US government.
Most telling is this, though, "Do you believe the internet should be filtered in schools? Yes, Yes." next question: "Do you believe the government should set criteria used to block web sites in schools?" Bush: no answer. Gore: "No." So just who the hell does he expect will decide how to implement the filters he just stated should be used?
Okay. I was wrong. It was not a Gap ad, but a Levi's ad. Other than that, this is the same lawsuit, in which without transcripts it is very hard to tell to what extent any royalties were withheld and under what circumstances. Jello admits in at least two other articles I've read that some royalties went unpaid (although this sounded more like a math problem than anything) and it appears that he would have paid these immediately had there not been this commingled issue of the "failure to promote" the back catalog. It is impossible to tell what portion of the $200K award was related to royalties and which part was related to revenues lost by not accepting the deal from Levi's. This whole case is an excellent example of the complete failure of the intellectual property laws in the US. There is no clear owner to the old DK tunes-- certainly not to the albums as wholes. There was no written business plan around the band, so who has what rights to what becomes pretty grey in this instance. What is obvious is that the US legal system is prepared only to decide oppositional cases and is highly unlikely to work toward any synergistic or creative solution to this problem. I'm surprised that the members of DK haven't figured out a solution like giving everyone a digital master copy of the audio for these albums and forcing everyone to come out with modified cover materials, or to do whatever else they might want (like making a "Best of..." compilation, or selling the rights to certain songs (and since four of them would have the selling rights, this would result in bidding wars :) )). I mean, it's not a black and white case of Jello being a dink and the other guys being screwed. At least that's my take as a long time fan of both DK and Jello's solo work. Certainly I think failing to cash in on the band that wrote the song "Anarchy for Sale" is not a crime, nor suitable grounds for a monetary lawsuit.
I realize that this is somewhat inflammatory, but I feel like it should be asked. I am not a programmer, and have the utmost respect for anyone who is capable of writing something like wine, but: Is that really a loss to the Free Software community? Is there any real use for wine except to run proprietary software under Linux? Does this not further our addiction to proprietary software (most notably that heinosity known as "Office") by reducing the imperative to create Free alternatives? Does this not endanger Free alternatives by extending the marketshare of proprietary applications (in that, Office users can now legitimately carp to Linux users that all work should be done in Office since it runs on wine)?
I think we have a misunderstanding. I quoted the aphorisms to say that the administration is being ineffective in this case (and not following typical adult advice) because it is paying too much attention to a simple prank. Unless you are the young man who set his crown to the field, and this prank was an effective way to bring your plight into view, his act is only tangentially related to your situation. I very much understand the motivation for this stunt on his part, and frankly I approve of it, but it's hardly newsworthy (in my hubristic opinion)-- because there are other much more severe transgressions in our schools being perpetrated by the "popular" kids, or by the administrations themselves. I have plenty sympathy for the way any differently-cast student feels, and think that this prank was fine. The school should have ignored him. As it is, he took a chance and they busted him because they can't possibly understand that sometimes no reaction would be a better move than overreaction. But they hardly deprived him of his civil rights, as the school in Tulsa is doing to the young woman in the story I referenced (a story I would have preferred to see on the front page of Slashdot).
I'd like to see a link to some further information on this "screwed out of royalties" assertion-- even to some crackpot Geocities punk 14-year-old-made web page that starts off with "i heard from somebody who heard from somebody...". Otherwise it's simply rumor-mongering and libelous. The only thing I've heard about a rift between Jello/AT and the other former DK band members is that he refused to release DK songs for use in Gap commercials-- for which they sued him on the grounds that he was unfairly impeding the work and preventing them from cashing in on their success (and this info is available at the AT site). Never mind that providing the soundtrack for a Gap ad runs 180 degrees counter to the spirit of any DK song.
So some kid opposed to the popularity contest that is the homecoming charade pulls a fast one on the school. Suspending him has really rewarded him for this act-- which is one of a number of great reasons for the school to have just let it go. If I recall the aphorisms of my youth correctly, they went something like, "Sticks and stones..." and "Ignore them and they'll go away."
This crap is not front page news for Slashdot. If this is news here, how much moreso is news like this case, where a teenage girl was suspended from school for casting a spell on her teacher.
I seriously doubt that someone (Nader) who graduated magna cum laude from Princeton and holds a law degree from Harvard is ignorant of basic economics and clings to any deep-seated class jealousy. This particular notion "tax speculation in the stock market" is way too vague as to be anything but fodder for clarification. It sounds like a capital gains tax to me. After all, how do you tax someone for speculation if they have actually lost money? Maybe they should just apply a national sales tax to the transfer of stock (since it's a sale). Either way, this will not affect investment drastically. Any reduction on investment gain due to taxation is merely to be figured into the return side of the risk equation-- just like it has been for years and years.
I agree. I'm exhausted just trying to separate the real injustices from the whining. This guy didn't defend himself. I still don't have a clue what his problem with Guiness was in the first place. And the whole fiasco says more about the nonsense that is the domain name system (not just the arbitrary arbitration-- witness the Sting and Madonna cases-- the fact is this whole TLD notion is broken, not just the decisioning process), than it does about trademark law and its use or abuse.
Hmmm. That will be just like the junk email I get from mp3.com.
On the business/legal aspects of this move, what they (BMG) have done is actually forego the lawsuit. This partnership appears to involve a great deal of Napster equity being allotted to BMG (whether this is strictly as a security on the loan or whether this is in perpetuity is unclear). I would suspect that the other four major label corporations will somehow join the partnership (i.e. they will also be bribed with an equity position), or that BMG is sufficiently equipped to fight a quick battle about royalties with those companies.
What I don't see is any mention of the following much more difficult questions: who is going to scan the music (currently done by an army of volunteer rippers), what format will the files be (if not mp3, how do they plan to implement this, unlike the switch from vinyl to CD or VHS to DVD, the industry does not have any control over the mp3 format, nor the majority of the tools used to make and play mp3s), how do they expect to store files (these files require serious bandwidth-- will they be continuing to use peer to peer?), if they continue p2p who will the hosting peers be (I certainly wouldn't host files for them without compensation-- at least the current honor system seems to work fairly well), if the files and hosting are done as now who will verify quality and accuracy (if I'm paying for Napster, why would I tolerate incomplete or falsely labeled files), and finally, how do they plan to change any single aspect of their current service without beginning to erode their user base significantly (most of these questions have very possible answers that I suspect will drive away users, and in combination will have an exponential impact-- that is one change drives away one user, but two changes drives away four, etc etc)?
Why not write to their boss, President William Jefferson Clinton, the Chief Executive of the Executive branch of the United States Federal Government (as FBI -> DOJ -> Exec Branch)? I'm sure you'll find that he's a reasonable freedom-loving American who cares deeply about the thoughts, feelings, and basic rights of all Americans (especially those hackers too stupid to stay away cracked sites before an official investigation begins). If he's not too busy renting out rooms or training interns, perhaps he could filter your complaint down to the appropriate supervisorial personnel in the FBI. I know that when I've written to him to express some point of dissatisfaction with the job the Federal Government is doing that he wrote back promptly, with an in-depth explanation of why he thought he was doing everything he possibly could to ignore the obvious solution to the issue at hand. I couldn't have been more pleased, and I think you'll have a similarly good experience!
Or, you could donate money to a group like the ACLU, who spend their time and efforts working in the legal system to address concerns about the erosion of our rights (with the possible exception of the rights that may be granted by Amendment Number Two to the Constitution- but that's got it's own watchdog group). And while the ACLU has a poor reputation because they defend the freedom of people not many other people like, they also do a lot of hard work on cases that just need to be fought (like this one, where a girl was suspended from school for casting a spell on a teacher). They do a lot of work surrounding search and seizure. Especially since some police departments apparently manage to gain considerable revenue by auctioning seized goods.