An ex-patriot would most likely make you a terrorist in this political climate.. an ex-patriot is one who is no longer a patriot, or no longer someone who loves, supports, and defends his country.
An expatriate is one who does not live in his country of citizenship any longer.
that when you are the size they are, with the money they have... you are playing on almost the same level as the governments of the world... and the sympathies we might have for some normal business do not exist.
Unless they require you to read a contract & sign a contract, this would have no hope in hell (even then).
If I walk into a store, and you sell me a book, you sold me a book. What else you said, or what stickers were on the packaging is irrelevant. It's a sale.. the object is now mine to do with as I see fit, except where other laws prevent it (copyright law, etc).
In order to do what you are suggesting, you would need a signed contract.
An EULA applies to software because you actually have to read AND AGREE by clicking... forcing you to agree to open a package is not good enough... and the validity of EULAs is still up in the air.
Opening a package without reading the label is a lot different han clicking on an "I AGREE" button without reading what you agree to.. one clearly shows something you are supposed to agree to.. the other is just... a sticker.
It's not as simple as you make it out, and if it was, it would be done, by everyone, already.
This has been tried in the past. Putting "You may not resell this book" in a book does not exempt it from the first sale doctrine.
If you buy a book, you can sell the book.. it's NOT a license agreement.
It will get tossed out, this *exact* thing has been tried before, many many years ago, when publishers wanted to prevent the sale of used books. It was tossed out of court, repeatedly.
A book is an object. Copyright law protects the author enough already.
Now, if you had some kind of contractual agreemnt and LOANED the books, that's different...
Humans are normally sensitive to three diffferent colors, optimally... though the receptor for each responds on a curve to wavelengths above and below center, and there is overlap (this is why you actually can see some colors, even though they are technically not there).
The primary colors are only primary becuase they match the receptors in our eyes.... and we can trick our eyes into seeing colors that aren't there... ie" the response to a certain wavelength is the same as the response to two otehr wavelegths with this one as the median, sort of.
The question of "Do you see what I see when I say I see red?" or "Maybe what I see as green, you see as red". THe whole concept of color is a mental structure, built up to deal with our reality. WE could verify that the pigments in your eye respond at the same wavelength as the ones in mine, and therefore say that we see the same colors.
Also.. what we perceieve is often very different from what's actually there... you can actually see colors that aren't there... even with one primary component missing completely from a projection, you can still make out, say, blue stuff. Just like contrast, light and dark, color is not just about wavelength.. though that is a large part of it.
Just how big and clunky do you think an iPod is? If you saw the first or second versions of the iPod, you should look again at the newest ones.. they are much smaller.
My ipod is like, the size of a pack of colts. Slightly thinner, and slightly longer than a deck of playing cards... it fits in a shirt pocket just fine. It's not heavy, either.
Now, I'm not saying it is as rugged or tiny as a solid state player, as I said.. but "big and clunky" is definately not a word I'd use to describe it.
Let's face it though, we're talking about two different markets...
solid state players are what you use to load up a few tunes, and go listen.. like carrying around a discman or walkman. Sure it holds a few more songs.. but it's the same niche.
The hard drive players are akin to carrying around a discman and a backpack full of cds, except in this case, the difference is a few ounces, dollars, and inches.
Here's the thing. It's one thing when you walk into a store and buy a CD. The sale is about a physical object, NOT about a license.. as much as the record companies would have you believe otherwise. You are covered by copyright law, nothing more.
What about ITMS? Isn't there some kind of agreement? If not, just because you have the right to try to sell something doesn't oblige Apple to help you do it. If transfer of ownership is not possible in a technical way, that's not Apple's problem.
Eudora. Evolution. Mail.app, ??? Also, perhaps Mutt, pine.. sometimes it's over imap.. sometimes it's local.
In the end.. I tend to keep things in an mbox format because ti's the most portable... but it still causes problems.
Ideally, what I would like to see is a server-side system that used standard mbox files, but perhaps had creative ways of indexing them externally, or slicing them up into pieces if they get too large. IMAP works well, but not well enough.. I want to be able to search remotely. I don't want to have to worry about what's on the client. Ideally, we need a new, remote reading protocol, and a solid server to back it up. This could also, of course, run locally if you want your mail local.. that's neither here nor there... we need a mail storage, retrieval, and archiving engine that interoperates wiht stadnard mail clients.
For now, I'll settle for a system where current mail is available from my mail client (Mail.app), and archived mail is accessed via a web based system.
For an OSX app, the interface is still messy.. easily fixable, but messy.
Why does the playlist a drawer come out of the control widget? If the widget is hidden, I can select "Playlist" from the menu, but it doesn't pop up. It should be a simple, resizeable window that I can organize quickly.
The player widget is visually unappealing. I don't mean I want real eyecandy.. but it's fugly.
I can't drag & drop a media file onto either the player widget or the video window.. that just does nothing. You have to actually drag to the launch icon on the dock (or wherever you have it).
There seems to be no reason. I suppose it's OSS, though, right? I can probably go grab the sources and fix it myself, right?
it doesn't have to look nice.. the software analyzes the way you move the mouse.. so even some else artistically inclined could not necessarily duplicate the way the signature was drawn with any statistical closeness, even if the finished product looked virtually the same.
People don't need to reverse engineer to do a lot of that... if you wrote some novel simple utility, and everyone liked it, nothing stops someone else from just looking at what it does and writing the same thing.
If your software, no matter how neat it looks, is so simple that a lot of people can look at it and write the exact same thing, what value are you bringing? Why should you get paid, but not them? Just because you found something that appeals to people? That's like saying these new business-model patents are okay... or that "one-click" was okay.
What I'm saying is, reverse engineering is no magic bullet.. and the kinds of things you are talking about aren't really what reverse engineering is about. I dont' need to reverse engineer napster to figure out how to share music... I just need to use it.
You have to realize that reverse engineering a complicated application, like say, MSWord, and producing an equivalent "clone" from the data gained by reverse engineering would cost a significant amount of time and effort, perhaps even MORE than the original development did. Note that you can't just reverse engineer it and steal the code.. that would be copyright violation.. you have to follow clean room techinques.. where those doing the reverse engineering document every last detail, and pass it to another team, via lawyers or other entities to ensure that they have no actual contact other than these documents, who builds the new system from spec. This is very expensive, and very time consuming.
If we are talking about real reasearch into algorithms, like video codecs or other things... that's where patents come into play. Otherwise, copyright already provides enough of a barrier that reverse engineering is no shortcut.
This just prevents them from forbidding you to reverse engineer.. it does nothing to lessen the cost of doing so.
I'm not saying theft is normal at all.. just that saying something is "original" is a loaded statement. How was napster original... it used an IRC-like interface, standard network protocols, and textbook file transfer methods... the only "original" part was the idea to build an app that JUST shared one type of file. There isn't even anything worth reverse engineering here, other than perhaps the network protocol, which was not any kind of technological feat, and had nothing to do with making it a good or bad product.
People already to reverse engineer, and reverse engineering is almost a right already.
You are free to figure out how your car works, and make your own.. the car company doesn't make you sign a no reverse engineering clause... so what's the point?
Software success should not be based on secrets. Innovative ideas can be patented. (let's pretend that patent still works for a minute here). Figuring out what the file format of a word processor document is so I can make other software that uses it is hardly "stealing" from teh company.. the only reason for them to make proprietary formats is to lock you in.
Reverse engineering is already standard.. this just brings things in line with reality.
stealing ideas is what business is all about. Do you think any successful products are totally original ideas? Hardly.. they are just an interesting put together.
Living up to the claims means that when we go in the store, and the package actually says "Imports all microsoft office formats", and it turns out that is false... that they have to take it back, no questions asked. It's a false sale.
The reason this needs to be stated is that, although you have this protection with physical products, the license-ish nature of software has allowed some vendors to claim that you have no recourse, even though they lied.
It's not the same thing as false advertising... more like sale under false pretenses.
I went to read this article thinking I would probably end up posting and saying that the US is too litigous, that it's dumb to have agreement upon agreement, even on the side of good, and that it was probably just a bunch of whiny rights.
What I found, though, was a simple, precise set of terms that are wholly agreeable. Nothing in that document is the least bit complicated or overbroad.
Let us see the contracts before we have to agree to them. Don't take away rights we already have, like criticism and reverse engineering, and first sale. If you know about serious bugs, tell us. Don't lie about what the product does.
That's pretty straightforward, and should not be the least bit damaging to anyone selling decent software.
I mean, really.... it's great that we've been able to use Trillian, Fire, Gaim, etc, all this time.... and sure some of us really rely on it.. I'm sure wondering whether I want to use Messenger now, or what I'm going to do...
But Microsoft is completely within their rights to do this... it's a free service. They could also just shut it off tomorrow. Or charge huge fees for it.. nobody has any right to complain.. that's the beauty of competition. You can go to other platforms.
Really, we need two things:
a better jabber server, from a software point of view. Something easier to set up. I mean, look.. I realize it's all XML and whatnot.. but as a long time computer "expert" and someone who's set up all kinds of bizarre things.. jabberd is DIFFICULT to understand without alot of study... the documentation just plain sucks.
We need a GOOD jabber implementation, and a set of solid clients on multiple platforms, something ISPs can roll out to their customers, letting them use their email addresses as jabber IDs. Get every ISP running jabber and promoting it to their clients.
Some of us would equate that joining your computer to the domain (which requires administrative priveleges on your computer) is BY DEFINITION turning control over to the domain administrator.
Ahh. SO he should be responsible because others had faulty security setups. I see.
Yes, he is responsible, but only to a degree.
Furthermore, it seems to me that in the United States of America, people are not really considered adults until they are 21.. you don't let them drink alcohol before that, do you? If you aren't responsible enough to drink... how can you be responsible for your own actions? Just a thought.
Yes, I realize that at 18 you are an "adult" but this shows that, especially in the US, this isn't the case for all things.
Yes, lots of systems were affected, nobody is denying that... but some of those systems were affected because they sucked, not because of what this guy did. Furthermore, saying he caused millions in damages means a lot less when you consider how spread out that damage was. For instance, my company had 100 computers infected, and usre, we put in an extra hour or two to fix it up... but in general, it was a normal week at work, and we aren't out anything. Should I say he caused $5000 damages to our company because of the time my co-workers and I spent cleaning up? Not really, we would have been here and paid anyway.
But in the case of signatures on paper.. the argument doesn't hold.
People have tried to argue that they signed some piece of paper becuase "Everyone does".. say when renting a car, or something.... and that the terms shouldn't apply to them.
The courts rightly ruled that you know you are being asked to agree to sometihng.. if you choose not to read it, that's YOUR risk, not theirs.... they offered you all the terms up front in good faith.
If you agreed knowing that it was a request by the copyright holders to agree to some terms, and think you can get by by mashing buttons with your eyes closed, how does that exhonerate you? I don't get it.
Yes, there are issues regarding click-through.. but that isn't one of them.
Is an 18 year old kid aware of this? Why, cause he saw some prison movies on TV? TV never lies, right?
Yes, it was destructive. Yes, a lot of people were inconvenienced. Do we think this person is therefore as guilty as a rapist or murderer? There is no doubt that this person caused financial damage.. but that's it. How about the responsibility of those who allowed such critical systems to be at risk? Is it the kids fault a transit system was vulnerable to a virus, hooked up to the internet, or not following proper security practices? You can't blame the entire thing on one kid.
That doesn't exhonerate him, but it's not all his fault, either.
It's not supposed to be pleasant. But it's not supposed to be torture either.
When we put someone in prison, it's to take away their freedom to do more damage. IT's not supposed to be FUN.. it's supposed to be a simple existence. You eat, shit, and breathe.
However, knowing that in the federal pen you will be sodomized, beaten, tattood, and basically have a really shitty inhumane existance... sentencing someone to federal prison is the same thing as sentencing them to rape, beatings, and torture, both physically and mentally.
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Expatriate....
An ex-patriot would most likely make you a terrorist in this political climate.. an ex-patriot is one who is no longer a patriot, or no longer someone who loves, supports, and defends his country.
An expatriate is one who does not live in his country of citizenship any longer.
So if a bunch of people get together to finance a new operating sytsem, it's okay, unless it's the people of an entire country, then it's bad?
that when you are the size they are, with the money they have... you are playing on almost the same level as the governments of the world... and the sympathies we might have for some normal business do not exist.
Unless they require you to read a contract & sign a contract, this would have no hope in hell (even then).
If I walk into a store, and you sell me a book, you sold me a book. What else you said, or what stickers were on the packaging is irrelevant. It's a sale.. the object is now mine to do with as I see fit, except where other laws prevent it (copyright law, etc).
In order to do what you are suggesting, you would need a signed contract.
An EULA applies to software because you actually have to read AND AGREE by clicking... forcing you to agree to open a package is not good enough... and the validity of EULAs is still up in the air.
Opening a package without reading the label is a lot different han clicking on an "I AGREE" button without reading what you agree to.. one clearly shows something you are supposed to agree to.. the other is just... a sticker.
It's not as simple as you make it out, and if it was, it would be done, by everyone, already.
Journalling does not prevent corruption. Journalling prevents long filesystem checks on boot.
A journalled filesystem is no more or less prone to corruption than a non-journalled filesystem with an FSCK on boot.
This has been tried in the past. Putting "You may not resell this book" in a book does not exempt it from the first sale doctrine.
If you buy a book, you can sell the book.. it's NOT a license agreement.
It will get tossed out, this *exact* thing has been tried before, many many years ago, when publishers wanted to prevent the sale of used books. It was tossed out of court, repeatedly.
A book is an object. Copyright law protects the author enough already.
Now, if you had some kind of contractual agreemnt and LOANED the books, that's different...
Yes.
Visual perception is everything.
Humans are normally sensitive to three diffferent colors, optimally... though the receptor for each responds on a curve to wavelengths above and below center, and there is overlap (this is why you actually can see some colors, even though they are technically not there).
The primary colors are only primary becuase they match the receptors in our eyes.... and we can trick our eyes into seeing colors that aren't there... ie" the response to a certain wavelength is the same as the response to two otehr wavelegths with this one as the median, sort of.
The question of "Do you see what I see when I say I see red?" or "Maybe what I see as green, you see as red". THe whole concept of color is a mental structure, built up to deal with our reality. WE could verify that the pigments in your eye respond at the same wavelength as the ones in mine, and therefore say that we see the same colors.
Also.. what we perceieve is often very different from what's actually there... you can actually see colors that aren't there... even with one primary component missing completely from a projection, you can still make out, say, blue stuff. Just like contrast, light and dark, color is not just about wavelength.. though that is a large part of it.
Just how big and clunky do you think an iPod is? If you saw the first or second versions of the iPod, you should look again at the newest ones.. they are much smaller.
My ipod is like, the size of a pack of colts. Slightly thinner, and slightly longer than a deck of playing cards... it fits in a shirt pocket just fine. It's not heavy, either.
Now, I'm not saying it is as rugged or tiny as a solid state player, as I said.. but "big and clunky" is definately not a word I'd use to describe it.
Let's face it though, we're talking about two different markets...
solid state players are what you use to load up a few tunes, and go listen.. like carrying around a discman or walkman. Sure it holds a few more songs.. but it's the same niche.
The hard drive players are akin to carrying around a discman and a backpack full of cds, except in this case, the difference is a few ounces, dollars, and inches.
Here's the thing. It's one thing when you walk into a store and buy a CD. The sale is about a physical object, NOT about a license.. as much as the record companies would have you believe otherwise. You are covered by copyright law, nothing more.
What about ITMS? Isn't there some kind of agreement? If not, just because you have the right to try to sell something doesn't oblige Apple to help you do it. If transfer of ownership is not possible in a technical way, that's not Apple's problem.
that's *MY* system. You stole it. I want money.
I've been hoping for some stroke of genius to hit so I can easily go through all the nested crap and clean stuff up... but disk space is too cheap.
Over the years, I will switch email clients.
Eudora. Evolution. Mail.app, ???
Also, perhaps Mutt, pine.. sometimes it's over imap.. sometimes it's local.
In the end.. I tend to keep things in an mbox format because ti's the most portable... but it still causes problems.
Ideally, what I would like to see is a server-side system that used standard mbox files, but perhaps had creative ways of indexing them externally, or slicing them up into pieces if they get too large. IMAP works well, but not well enough.. I want to be able to search remotely. I don't want to have to worry about what's on the client.
Ideally, we need a new, remote reading protocol, and a solid server to back it up. This could also, of course, run locally if you want your mail local.. that's neither here nor there... we need a mail storage, retrieval, and archiving engine that interoperates wiht stadnard mail clients.
For now, I'll settle for a system where current mail is available from my mail client (Mail.app), and archived mail is accessed via a web based system.
For an OSX app, the interface is still messy.. easily fixable, but messy.
Why does the playlist a drawer come out of the control widget? If the widget is hidden, I can select "Playlist" from the menu, but it doesn't pop up.
It should be a simple, resizeable window that I can organize quickly.
The player widget is visually unappealing. I don't mean I want real eyecandy.. but it's fugly.
I can't drag & drop a media file onto either the player widget or the video window.. that just does nothing. You have to actually drag to the launch icon on the dock (or wherever you have it).
There seems to be no reason. I suppose it's OSS, though, right? I can probably go grab the sources and fix it myself, right?
works fine on osx.
it doesn't have to look nice.. the software analyzes the way you move the mouse.. so even some else artistically inclined could not necessarily duplicate the way the signature was drawn with any statistical closeness, even if the finished product looked virtually the same.
People don't need to reverse engineer to do a lot of that... if you wrote some novel simple utility, and everyone liked it, nothing stops someone else from just looking at what it does and writing the same thing.
If your software, no matter how neat it looks, is so simple that a lot of people can look at it and write the exact same thing, what value are you bringing? Why should you get paid, but not them? Just because you found something that appeals to people? That's like saying these new business-model patents are okay... or that "one-click" was okay.
What I'm saying is, reverse engineering is no magic bullet.. and the kinds of things you are talking about aren't really what reverse engineering is about. I dont' need to reverse engineer napster to figure out how to share music... I just need to use it.
You have to realize that reverse engineering a complicated application, like say, MSWord, and producing an equivalent "clone" from the data gained by reverse engineering would cost a significant amount of time and effort, perhaps even MORE than the original development did. Note that you can't just reverse engineer it and steal the code.. that would be copyright violation.. you have to follow clean room techinques.. where those doing the reverse engineering document every last detail, and pass it to another team, via lawyers or other entities to ensure that they have no actual contact other than these documents, who builds the new system from spec. This is very expensive, and very time consuming.
If we are talking about real reasearch into algorithms, like video codecs or other things... that's where patents come into play. Otherwise, copyright already provides enough of a barrier that reverse engineering is no shortcut.
This just prevents them from forbidding you to reverse engineer.. it does nothing to lessen the cost of doing so.
I'm not saying theft is normal at all.. just that saying something is "original" is a loaded statement. How was napster original... it used an IRC-like interface, standard network protocols, and textbook file transfer methods... the only "original" part was the idea to build an app that JUST shared one type of file. There isn't even anything worth reverse engineering here, other than perhaps the network protocol, which was not any kind of technological feat, and had nothing to do with making it a good or bad product.
People already to reverse engineer, and reverse engineering is almost a right already.
You are free to figure out how your car works, and make your own.. the car company doesn't make you sign a no reverse engineering clause... so what's the point?
Software success should not be based on secrets. Innovative ideas can be patented. (let's pretend that patent still works for a minute here). Figuring out what the file format of a word processor document is so I can make other software that uses it is hardly "stealing" from teh company.. the only reason for them to make proprietary formats is to lock you in.
Reverse engineering is already standard.. this just brings things in line with reality.
stealing ideas is what business is all about. Do you think any successful products are totally original ideas? Hardly.. they are just an interesting put together.
Marketing is not what we are talking about.
Living up to the claims means that when we go in the store, and the package actually says "Imports all microsoft office formats", and it turns out that is false... that they have to take it back, no questions asked. It's a false sale.
The reason this needs to be stated is that, although you have this protection with physical products, the license-ish nature of software has allowed some vendors to claim that you have no recourse, even though they lied.
It's not the same thing as false advertising... more like sale under false pretenses.
I went to read this article thinking I would probably end up posting and saying that the US is too litigous, that it's dumb to have agreement upon agreement, even on the side of good, and that it was probably just a bunch of whiny rights.
What I found, though, was a simple, precise set of terms that are wholly agreeable. Nothing in that document is the least bit complicated or overbroad.
Let us see the contracts before we have to agree to them. Don't take away rights we already have, like criticism and reverse engineering, and first sale. If you know about serious bugs, tell us. Don't lie about what the product does.
That's pretty straightforward, and should not be the least bit damaging to anyone selling decent software.
I mean, really.... it's great that we've been able to use Trillian, Fire, Gaim, etc, all this time.... and sure some of us really rely on it.. I'm sure wondering whether I want to use Messenger now, or what I'm going to do...
But Microsoft is completely within their rights to do this... it's a free service. They could also just shut it off tomorrow. Or charge huge fees for it.. nobody has any right to complain.. that's the beauty of competition. You can go to other platforms.
Really, we need two things:
a better jabber server, from a software point of view. Something easier to set up. I mean, look.. I realize it's all XML and whatnot.. but as a long time computer "expert" and someone who's set up all kinds of bizarre things.. jabberd is DIFFICULT to understand without alot of study... the documentation just plain sucks.
We need a GOOD jabber implementation, and a set of solid clients on multiple platforms, something ISPs can roll out to their customers, letting them use their email addresses as jabber IDs. Get every ISP running jabber and promoting it to their clients.
Keep non-official machines in a separate area. Treat it like the internet. Don't grant them special access to anything.
That way, at worst they infect each other.
Some of us would equate that joining your computer to the domain (which requires administrative priveleges on your computer) is BY DEFINITION turning control over to the domain administrator.
Ahh. SO he should be responsible because others had faulty security setups. I see.
Yes, he is responsible, but only to a degree.
Furthermore, it seems to me that in the United States of America, people are not really considered adults until they are 21.. you don't let them drink alcohol before that, do you? If you aren't responsible enough to drink... how can you be responsible for your own actions? Just a thought.
Yes, I realize that at 18 you are an "adult" but this shows that, especially in the US, this isn't the case for all things.
Yes, lots of systems were affected, nobody is denying that... but some of those systems were affected because they sucked, not because of what this guy did. Furthermore, saying he caused millions in damages means a lot less when you consider how spread out that damage was. For instance, my company had 100 computers infected, and usre, we put in an extra hour or two to fix it up... but in general, it was a normal week at work, and we aren't out anything. Should I say he caused $5000 damages to our company because of the time my co-workers and I spent cleaning up? Not really, we would have been here and paid anyway.
But in the case of signatures on paper.. the argument doesn't hold.
People have tried to argue that they signed some piece of paper becuase "Everyone does".. say when renting a car, or something.... and that the terms shouldn't apply to them.
The courts rightly ruled that you know you are being asked to agree to sometihng.. if you choose not to read it, that's YOUR risk, not theirs.... they offered you all the terms up front in good faith.
If you agreed knowing that it was a request by the copyright holders to agree to some terms, and think you can get by by mashing buttons with your eyes closed, how does that exhonerate you? I don't get it.
Yes, there are issues regarding click-through.. but that isn't one of them.
Is an 18 year old kid aware of this? Why, cause he saw some prison movies on TV? TV never lies, right?
Yes, it was destructive. Yes, a lot of people were inconvenienced. Do we think this person is therefore as guilty as a rapist or murderer? There is no doubt that this person caused financial damage.. but that's it. How about the responsibility of those who allowed such critical systems to be at risk? Is it the kids fault a transit system was vulnerable to a virus, hooked up to the internet, or not following proper security practices? You can't blame the entire thing on one kid.
That doesn't exhonerate him, but it's not all his fault, either.
It's not supposed to be pleasant. But it's not supposed to be torture either.
When we put someone in prison, it's to take away their freedom to do more damage. IT's not supposed to be FUN.. it's supposed to be a simple existence. You eat, shit, and breathe.
However, knowing that in the federal pen you will be sodomized, beaten, tattood, and basically have a really shitty inhumane existance... sentencing someone to federal prison is the same thing as sentencing them to rape, beatings, and torture, both physically and mentally.