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User: milo_Gwalthny

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  1. Re:And.... on Novell Claims Ownership of UNIX System V · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Of course, if I were SCO and had paid for an exclusive license from Novell, I would sue Novell to force them to enforce their copyrights on the theory that an exclusive license is nothing of the sort if they are going to give away the code.

    But, then, I am an evil businessperson.

  2. Re:IRS on Intuit Drops DRM from Future Products · · Score: 1

    I agree with that. In fact, at one time some dotcom was implementing this for free, so they could make money through advertising, or selling eyeballs or something.

  3. Re:IRS on Intuit Drops DRM from Future Products · · Score: 1

    This presupposes that the IRS actually understands the tax code. The US tax code is far too complicated for programmers on a government scale to understand. Studies show that the people on the IRS help lines get a good percentage of questions wrong.

    What would put H&R Block and the like out of business is having a tax code that wasn't so damned complicated. And that would be a good thing.

  4. Re:Actually, I'm shocked!! on Intuit Drops DRM from Future Products · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I installed Turbotax on my work computer (well, doing my taxes seemed like work) and then the IT people came and took my machine away because the lease had run out and they gave me a new one. Turbotax was the only software I couldn't reinstall. I know I kept tech support on the line for a least two hours (to activate on a new computer they wanted to know the date I activated it on the first computer: how the heck am I supposed to remember that?), as well as filing a bad review at Amazon and sending a nasty letter to their CEO. I am sure they spent more money on me than they would have saved if I was a pirate.

    That said, I like the software and the fact that they listened to my complaints mean I will probably buy it again next year.

  5. Re:The Hon. Member is *not* a yappy cocker spaniel on Spam, Milord · · Score: 1

    The incident before the civil war was famous because it showed the tension between the north and south. Senator Charles Sumner, Republican of Massachusetts, was caned by representative Preston Brooks, Democrat of South Carolina, in 1856 for insulting Senator Andrew Butler's stance on Kansas (and making light of his medical condition). Brooks was Butler's nephew and caned Sumner at his desk in a nearly empty Senate chamber. So, as legislation it didn't really work because they were from different chambers. As propaganda it worked pretty well, but for Sumner and the abolitionists.

    I think the first 'caning' in congress was in 1798. You can read about it here.

  6. Lessig on Lessig on Streamcast/Grokster Decision · · Score: 1

    Now, I've been meaning to read Lessig's books. I was waiting for his most recent to come out in paperback so it would be a little more affordable. Seeing his feelings in the FT editorial though, could someone ask him to just post an electronic copy somewhere, because I don't feel like paying $10.50 for it if I don't have to.

    Thanks.

  7. Re:Those filthy filthy thieves... on Lessig on Streamcast/Grokster Decision · · Score: 1

    I always find it a little strange that so many /.ers, who probably do, or will, make their living by creating intellectual property think that those creations should not have to be paid for.

    Here's a thought experiment: let's say you're a computer programmer and create something unheard of wicked. You show it to a company and they copy it, sell it as their own and throw you out on your ass. Wouldn't you think it entirely besides the point if, when you call them thieves, someone prissily sidles up to you and says "theft is the wrong way to describe it."?

  8. Re:Jumpin on the bandwagon on Wall Street Meat · · Score: 1

    Fraud is often defined as "an intentional misrepresentation of a matter of fact." Analysts inflating their opinion of a stock is not fraud. If it were fraud, I am sure that Spitzer would have indicted analysts for fraud, not just fined them in a settlement. After all, he is a government employee tasked with protecting us, not a private litigant looking for some easy dough.

    You are responsible for your own money. The fact that you lost it all buying Amazon at $400 makes you stupid, yes.

    In any case, the main point of my post is that the settlement leaves us worse off than we were. Do you disagree with that?

  9. Re:fraud on Wall Street Meat · · Score: 1

    Let me respond to this differently, on reflection:

    I don't care if they are frauds, cheats and liars. People lie to me all the time, in little ways; like the analysts they misrepresent or hide how they really feel about a product. I call these people "salespeople." On the other hand, the fact that I know their bias and can correct for it makes them more useful than people who don't know anything at all (I call these people "brokers.")

    If an analyst had been found to knowingly lie about a material fact ("the company is shipping product") as opposed to misrepresenting his or her opinion, then I would feel differently about him or her. But, I have a hard time saying that everyone who gilds the lily (which would include pretty much all advertisers, and husbands) should be despised.

    The fact is, if our government wanted to make Wall Street a safer place for investors, they could do that. But the settlement does not do that. On the contrary, it makes Wall Street less available to the average investor and gives the institutional investor an even bigger advantage. Free research, even of the mediocre quality often found on Wall Street, gives the average investor more information than pretty much any other source. All government mandated information is aimed at sophisticated investors--reading a 10K is not easy.

    My answer would not be to forbid the tying of analysis to investment banking, but to bless it: tell the world that the analysts are salespeople! Then, anyone reading their analysis can take it with the appropriate grain(s) of salt.

  10. Re:fraud on Wall Street Meat · · Score: 1

    Sometimes it's the choice of lesser evils. You don't see me defending analysts in my post (except maybe debt analysts, but who has anything bad to say about them anyway?) I'm attacking Spitzer and his ib settlement. If you're defending a politician, then you should take your own above advice.

  11. Jumpin on the bandwagon on Wall Street Meat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yet another book about the scapegoat du jour. We all lost money because Jack Grubman and Henry Blodget gave us bad advice. Widows and orphans losing millions of dollars because of corrupt analysts!

    What was it everybody was thinking? Oh, look, the nice analysts are giving us something worth millions of dollars for free! Why are they doing that? I guess investment bankers are just nice guys. You'd have to be stupider than Elliot Spitzer to believe that.

    Come on. Analysts were sales shills for IPOs. Anybody who was there knew that... it was admitted in every major business news outlet there is or was, at the time. What is this stupid settlement anyway? Let's call a shovel a shovel, people, It's a shakedown.

    The shame of it is, there is good research out there, especially if you ignore the rating and price target and just read the copy. The analyst has the time and opportunity to talk to management, customers and competitors and tell you what they found. It may not be great info, but it's a darn sight better than what you read in friggin Business Week two months later. Read the bond analyst research if you want to see quality (what, you can't get it? That's because you didn't pay for it.) After the settlement this will all disappear. So instead of having something marginally useful for free and let the emptor caveat, we get nothing. A victory for the small investor. Right.

    Thanks Elliot. Like Guiliani, maybe we can make you Mayor so you can stop making things worse just to satisfy your ego.

  12. Re:Philosophy and the matrix... on First Matrix Reloaded Review · · Score: 1

    Or, if you're thinking of the Christian God, try Aquinas.

  13. Re:Adaptive teergrubing anyone? on Earthlink Deploying Challenge-Response Anti-Spam System · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Take a look at the front page article in the WSJ today... about one of Earthlink's most virulent spammers. He used 300+ dial-up accounts, set up with fraudulent/stolen billing info and was sending (they say) 1 million+ spams per day. Took them like a year and a John Doe lawsuit to finally figure out who he was and stop him. Interestingly, one of the ways they were tracking his accounts was by which passwords he used (he tended to use just a few for all of his accounts)--thought he would catch on to that.

    Great article, wish I could post a link. To your point... wouldn't this guy have been automatically whitelisted?

  14. IT Dead? on Is The Software Industry Dead? · · Score: 2, Informative

    For another pessimistic point of view, check out May's Harvard Business Review, "IT Doesn't Matter," summary here. (I suggest reading it at a good magazine store with tables and coffee because buying the damn thing is not a sound value proposition.)

    The article essentially argues that an in-house IT department is no longer strategic for most companies--that IT has become a commodity. Although I think this is completely absurd at this point, chances are they have a point. In any case, it's interesting reading.

  15. Re:Interesting but... on O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, this stuff has been prettily thoroughly hashed out in the literature. I only brought up Locke because most people don't seem to realize that the philosophical definition of property has occupied almost as much time of our greatest thinkers as justice, and had a much more significant effect on our government and laws, if not morals. I don't think I'm up to standing on the shoulders of giants here, the air is pretty rarified.

    Hard to argue with the old "they are because I say they are." It may be patently obvious to you, but it can't be that obvious if you can't even defend it. Goods are property because you have given something for them: your labor (originally, later, your money.) What have you given for an idea? What if someone else has the same idea? Haven't they given exactly what you have, without depriving you of anything? Why don't they have the same property right in the idea you have?

    Natural rights are exactly that: rights that exist prior to a government; they have a moral validity. If, as seems to be the case, you would rather argue utility than rights, I would also prefer that. (You do seem to be getting mixed up between rights, utility and law, though, so we should try and figure out on which grounds we are arguing... trying to draw a line between any two would be a doctoral dissertation in the making.)

    If deprivation of property is "harm. Period, paragraph." then you must have a hard time holding down a job. You work, someone else gets your property. I doubt you really believe that is a hardship (although it was, essentially, the Marxist argument against capitalism.) You might argue that you know they will own what you create prior to your creating it, and they pay you, so they legitimately own the property (in the absence of you actually having arguments, I will put words in your mouth.) Similarly, if you create a work, knowing that your creation is yours for a limited time only and you decide to do it anyway, then you receive exactly the benefit you anticipated (or more if Congress decides to extend the term in the meantime.) You have not been deprived of anything. (Or, if it makes you feel better, consider the loss of rights a tax. Are taxes undue harm?)

    Well, it is officially the weekend, and the bar calls. So, not knowing who you are, I guess you get the last word, which I will dutifully read on Monday.

  16. Re:Yes they are relevant after 14 years on O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations · · Score: 1

    I wish Knuth were public domain...

  17. Re:Interesting but... on O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You want to re-argue hundreds of years of philosophy on Slashdot? Ouch. If you believe your opinions have more universal validity than Locke's or Nozick's, I suggest publishing them.

    I wasn't the one who dragged natural rights into this in the first place and, as mentioned by you (or some other equally indistinguishable AC--do you mind getting an ID so I can at least try not to tar other faceless people with my brush, such as it is?), natural rights are a value thesis. Arguing value theses will run into my weekend.

    But, seeing as how my Milo Gwalthny persona is especially opinionated, let's have at it. Why do you think intangibles are property. Of course, what you think property is, in the first place, has to be explained first. Why do you believe the ownership of property should be protected, in terms of morality as opposed to terms of economic efficiency? How is the deprivation of property, if known prior to said property's creation, undue harm? (Conversely, if copyright terms are extended post the creation of property, isn't that, then, a seizure from the public, who would have obtained ownership otherwise, and thus a violation of the fourth?)

  18. Re:Interesting but... on O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations · · Score: 1

    Well, I may believe the decision is valid, but I don't especially like it; thus the choice of words.

    Re-reading my post, "legal validity" was a poor choice of words. Of course Supreme Court precedent has legal validity. What I meant to say was a combination of legal permanence (as constitutional rights are meant to have) and moral suasion (as rights in general are meant to have.)

  19. Re:Interesting but... on O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations · · Score: 1

    My other posts are criticism. That post was, believe it or not, support. Corporations are considered people. There is undeniable legal support for that view. Although the idea is sometimes difficult to get a grip on, it has survived more than a hundred years of intense legal challenge.

    I don't believe, though, that a right created by the Supreme Court has the same legal validity as one created by a constitutional convention. Do you? The Supreme Court is clearly subject to politics (see the new deal and their response to FDR's court packing plan.) Sometimes rights the Supreme Court creates are clearly wrong (see Dred Scott.) In any case, a right created by the Supreme Court can be easily destroyed by the Supreme Court. Rights created by a convention are harder to destroy.

  20. Re:Interesting but... on O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Good comeback.

    Locke talks about propery being created from things found in nature to which a person has added "the Labour of his Body and the Work of his Hands" (from his Second Treatise, On Property.) The argument in Second Treatise clearly applies to actual labour, not ideas--read it and see. Also, read Nozick's commentary in Anarchy, State and Utopia. He agrees that property rights can not be claimed if by appropriating something from a state of nature, the rights of someone else are noticeably worsened. This clearly applies to ideas as it does not to, say, acorns.

    You seem like a smart coward, though, why not back up your retort with something concrete?

  21. Re:Interesting but... on O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations · · Score: 1

    Wasn't criticism, just exposition. You seem a bit defensive. Is that why you're an anonymous coward?

  22. Re:Interesting but... on O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations · · Score: 1

    Natural property rights don't apply to intangible property. Do we need to re-read Locke, perhaps?

  23. Re:Interesting but... on O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Constitutional protection of corporations as people has been applied in limited way since the late 19th century as a result of a series of gilded age Supreme Court decisions. Derided at the time as pandering to the business classes, they remain precedent.

  24. Re:Why? Hmmm.... let me think on Cheap Audio Production · · Score: 1

    But you can get some DVDs at prices lower than that of a music CD

    Which gets to the crux of the issue: most things aren't priced on a cost-plus basis. Lower costs have nothing to do with price in the short-run, and in an industry like the music industry, in the long-run. Prices are set by what the market will bear; lower costs become higher profits for the artist or the record company (in this case, probably the artist because production costs are usually billed against the artist's piece of the take.)

    DVDs can be priced cheaper than CDs because there is competition from rentals, lowering the price the market will bear. [Note that when I say 'what the market will bear,' this is a simplification of the true pricing mechanism: finding the maximum yield, where yield is defined as price times units. The price-demand curve is not linear, so a higher price may lower yield if it changes demand more than price changes, just as a lower price may lower the yield if the price is lowered more than demand is increased.]

  25. Re:Insanity on The Virus Did It · · Score: 1

    The point of justice is not actually what you think it is, either. It's rehabilitation.

    Well, rehabilitation is not the point of justice, the point of justice is Justice. Rehabilitation may be the point of the Justice System, although that is simply your view, certainly not the view of all people.

    In your example, insane guy kills Sam, I don't believe you think that a Just outcome exists: if Sam is prosecuted, it is unjust because he is insane; if Sam is not prosecuted, it is unjust because the victim has not been treated fairly (he was killed, and there was no countervailing action.) What is just in this situation?

    Some cultures would also disagree with your contention that it is the intent that matters. There are cultures that believe that if you run over a baby by accident or if you are drunk, the punishment should be the same. This makes sense, in a way, because it is difficult if not impossible to objectively and consistently know intent. I, personally, disagree with this approach with people--it reminds me of how we treat dogs: bite once and be destroyed, no matter the circumstances.

    But, my main point is that rehabilitation and justice are barely connected. Rehabilitation is a social goal, not a factor in justice. If there was a machine where we could push a button and make sure Sam's killer was 'rehabilitated', I do not believe most people would consider this treatment enough to satisfy the goal of justice.