They might be infringing, or they might not. It all depends on how the emulator was written, and whether or not they're providing ROM images or linking to other sites that do. Emulators are legal, but as I understand it there are certain limitations to avoid legal issues. E.g. the IBM-compatible BIOS, which was (legally) reverse-engineered from the IBM PC BIOS. The BIOS in classic Macs, by comparison, has never been reverse-engineered (to my knowledge), so in order to run a Mac classic emulator you have to (legally) obtain a copy of the Mac's BIOS ROM (of which the only way to legally get a copy is to buy an old Mac and use a ROM-dumping utility).
IANAL, so for advice tailored to their particular situation they'd need to contact a lawyer who specialized in copyright.
No, I think GGP's point was that defamation is a crime and you shouldn't expect to be able to freely break the law just because you're online and think you're anonymous. A court can issue a subpoena to find out who you are.
This Canadian ruling simply declined on the basis that the plaintiff didn't actually try to support her claim that she'd been defamed, therefore they weren't going to just willy-nilly rubber stamp a subpoena for her to find out the identity of someone she'd had a disagreement online.
I can't verify that at the moment, as the dcemulation site is blocked, but the term "cease-and-desist letters" (used in TFS) doesn't specifically only apply to DMCA takedown notices.
Also, if you ever teach math, don't be a dick at teach kids this "cross multiplication" garbage. That is not valid math and it still has to be sorted out in Calc I.
Um, what?
(a)/(b) = (c)/(d) ((a)/(b))(d) = c ((a)(d))/(b) = c (a)(d) = (b)(c)
That's perfectly valid math, and most of the parentheses are unnecessary. I only included them because that's where most people will screw up when they try to cross-multiply something. But they ought to be smart enough to figure out on their own when they need parentheses around one of the factors.
They obviously believe that an "Atari emulator" that emulates, as closely as possible, an actual Atari could feasibly be confused with an actual Atari product. And I have to admit, they have a point.
Personally I think emulators should be legal, but I have no idea how a lawyer would argue this in court. Probably some sort of disclaimer stating very clearly that it is not associated with or endorsed by Atari would be enough to cover their legal behinds, but even then I'm sure Atari would try to challenge it.
However, the emulators in question appear to have no copyrighted content from Atari, so it's unclear what exactly Atari believes the infringing material to be
Only if you don't break the law, or the person accusing you is too dumb to prove that John Doe actually broke the law before trying to subpoena John Doe's identity.
It is safe to say that botulism doesn't have an opinion. However, it can be used for either evil (infecting people) or good (genetics research, developing cures). That is what "amoral" means.
When you started up, you got your full display without running Progman at all, and Progman wasn't in the task list.
I don't understand. By "full display" do you mean wallpaper? There weren't desktop icons or a taskbar in Windows 3.1, so that's about all there was: a wallpaper. Progman was basically the same as Explorer; about the only difference was that it didn't run full-screen and it didn't track open applications with a task bar.
Funny how I can open the task manager and kill it.
Sure, but what you don't realize is that its DLL files are still linked into and used by all sorts of other processes, such as embedded IE (HTML help files, for one example), File Open/Save dialogs, etc.
But try this with Explorer killed.
Open Notepad, file, open, all files, browse to desktop, right-click any shortcut, "Find Target". Should: Open folder containing shortcut in Explorer. Does: nothing.
When done with this experiment just start explorer.exe again and everything is back to normal.
Not quite, at least under XP: clicking a taskbar button to minimize the window doesn't work, and some apps with tray icons don't reappear in the tray when Explorer starts back up. Nothing show-stopping, though (well, that tray icon one is bad, but it's fairly rare, and to fix it you just kill the process with task manager and re-open it). I haven't tried it on Windows 7.
You're correct; all of the Start-button hotkeys are captured and executed by Explorer. Ctrl-Alt-Del and Ctrl-Shift-Esc are not, and work regardless of whether Explorer is running.
Regardless, the slide ends with the author stating that the ANSI standard 'is not applicable to covert operations.' What might that assertion have meant to the presentation's intended audience?
No, the desktop disappears but your windows are fine if Explorer dies, unless they're Explorer windows that piggybacked on the original Explorer process. If you minimize a window it has nowhere to go and just disappears (alt-tab still works though). When Explorer starts back up it restores the desktop and repopulates the taskbar, but not without its glitches (clicking on the taskbar button to minimize is glitched, and the icons in the system tray don't always come back).
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, so they are claiming copyright infringement.
They might be infringing, or they might not. It all depends on how the emulator was written, and whether or not they're providing ROM images or linking to other sites that do. Emulators are legal, but as I understand it there are certain limitations to avoid legal issues. E.g. the IBM-compatible BIOS, which was (legally) reverse-engineered from the IBM PC BIOS. The BIOS in classic Macs, by comparison, has never been reverse-engineered (to my knowledge), so in order to run a Mac classic emulator you have to (legally) obtain a copy of the Mac's BIOS ROM (of which the only way to legally get a copy is to buy an old Mac and use a ROM-dumping utility).
IANAL, so for advice tailored to their particular situation they'd need to contact a lawyer who specialized in copyright.
No, I think GGP's point was that defamation is a crime and you shouldn't expect to be able to freely break the law just because you're online and think you're anonymous. A court can issue a subpoena to find out who you are.
This Canadian ruling simply declined on the basis that the plaintiff didn't actually try to support her claim that she'd been defamed, therefore they weren't going to just willy-nilly rubber stamp a subpoena for her to find out the identity of someone she'd had a disagreement online.
Except they are spamming DMCA notices
I can't verify that at the moment, as the dcemulation site is blocked, but the term "cease-and-desist letters" (used in TFS) doesn't specifically only apply to DMCA takedown notices.
Also, if you ever teach math, don't be a dick at teach kids this "cross multiplication" garbage. That is not valid math and it still has to be sorted out in Calc I.
Um, what?
(a)/(b) = (c)/(d)
((a)/(b))(d) = c
((a)(d))/(b) = c
(a)(d) = (b)(c)
That's perfectly valid math, and most of the parentheses are unnecessary. I only included them because that's where most people will screw up when they try to cross-multiply something. But they ought to be smart enough to figure out on their own when they need parentheses around one of the factors.
They obviously believe that an "Atari emulator" that emulates, as closely as possible, an actual Atari could feasibly be confused with an actual Atari product. And I have to admit, they have a point.
Personally I think emulators should be legal, but I have no idea how a lawyer would argue this in court. Probably some sort of disclaimer stating very clearly that it is not associated with or endorsed by Atari would be enough to cover their legal behinds, but even then I'm sure Atari would try to challenge it.
However, the emulators in question appear to have no copyrighted content from Atari, so it's unclear what exactly Atari believes the infringing material to be
Their trademark.
and very small values of 5.
Tommyknockers.
Some of the details in your summary were incorrect, by the way.
Only if you don't break the law, or the person accusing you is too dumb to prove that John Doe actually broke the law before trying to subpoena John Doe's identity.
It is safe to say that botulism doesn't have an opinion. However, it can be used for either evil (infecting people) or good (genetics research, developing cures). That is what "amoral" means.
You mean to tell me that selling stuff is neither inherently moral nor inherently immoral but it can be used for either purpose?
No fucking way...
The point was that the dialog requires Explorer to be running in order to work properly, i.e. it's "integrated" with Explorer.
When you started up, you got your full display without running Progman at all, and Progman wasn't in the task list.
I don't understand. By "full display" do you mean wallpaper? There weren't desktop icons or a taskbar in Windows 3.1, so that's about all there was: a wallpaper. Progman was basically the same as Explorer; about the only difference was that it didn't run full-screen and it didn't track open applications with a task bar.
Working in the "security field" and focusing on Windows is pretty much teh lulz.
Working in the "medical field" and focusing on sick people is pretty much teh lulz.
Funny how I can open the task manager and kill it.
Sure, but what you don't realize is that its DLL files are still linked into and used by all sorts of other processes, such as embedded IE (HTML help files, for one example), File Open/Save dialogs, etc.
But try this with Explorer killed.
Open Notepad, file, open, all files, browse to desktop, right-click any shortcut, "Find Target". Should: Open folder containing shortcut in Explorer. Does: nothing.
When done with this experiment just start explorer.exe again and everything is back to normal.
Not quite, at least under XP: clicking a taskbar button to minimize the window doesn't work, and some apps with tray icons don't reappear in the tray when Explorer starts back up. Nothing show-stopping, though (well, that tray icon one is bad, but it's fairly rare, and to fix it you just kill the process with task manager and re-open it). I haven't tried it on Windows 7.
You're correct; all of the Start-button hotkeys are captured and executed by Explorer. Ctrl-Alt-Del and Ctrl-Shift-Esc are not, and work regardless of whether Explorer is running.
To the intended audience, yes, that's pretty much exactly what it would mean...
Regardless, the slide ends with the author stating that the ANSI standard 'is not applicable to covert operations.' What might that assertion have meant to the presentation's intended audience?
It means, "what they don't know won't hurt them."
Fine, "if you minimize a window it just disappears as there's no shell to show you that it's minimized".
I used trillian.exe for my shell for a while, for a similar reason...
The window manager is dwm.exe.
Not under XP it wasn't.
No, but I was seriously considering stopping at a CiCi's.
No, the desktop disappears but your windows are fine if Explorer dies, unless they're Explorer windows that piggybacked on the original Explorer process. If you minimize a window it has nowhere to go and just disappears (alt-tab still works though). When Explorer starts back up it restores the desktop and repopulates the taskbar, but not without its glitches (clicking on the taskbar button to minimize is glitched, and the icons in the system tray don't always come back).
Not like they'd be the first:
http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html