Damage caps are there because companies complain that they are being destroyed by frivolous lawsuits. Poor guys. The frivolous ones generally get tossed. Its the ones where they actually misbehave that they get hit with the large verdicts.
What companies really want is a way to budget for a lawsuit loss. "If I do this illegal thing and someone catches me, what's the worst case for the bottom line." Damage caps therefore allow a company to rationalize a possibility of a lawsuit to a dollar amount.
Sample Budget:
No, its actually in the license agreements from MS to the OEM that they must provide a "media-less" install, ie a copy of the os that is not the full operating system, but is one that only works with the system that it shipped with.
The OEMs don't have a choice on this one until the MS antitrust appeal is done, at which MS can't retaliate if an OEM insists that it not be a part of the contract. The antitrust trial could thus stop one more stupid thing by MS.
It is legal to shield anyone under 18 from material so long as it doesn't restrict those over 18. There is no political element to this... unless all violent games were politically oriented, (or could be) then this is legal. Sexually explicit stuff can be censored. The only reason why the Communications Decency Act, etc. have had problems is because Congress used the excuse of stopping kids from seeing explicit images to put a blanket on things all have a right to see and read, like information on prostate surgery. If the law is vague and stops adult access or political speech, it probably is unconstitutional. But if it is very narrow, as this seems to be... then its ok.
The real question is will it do anything... and of course it won't. It'll be like R rated movies and liquor stores, where the only law is the law of the almighty dollar.
Maybe its possible to have the two exist together... Open source doesn't require your internal company tech to be given up... if you have patents, then you can give up the specs and open-source the driver without losing any commerce and in fact will make more money because your drivers will work better and make users happy. Your money is in the device that you sell. So it probably is in the best interests of the company to open source the drivers for a proprietary device.
Maybe the best thing if you have a non-proprietary device (i.e. a sb clone, etc.) is to make the item compatible with a standard device... then you concentrate on making your device faster within those constraints... if you find a way to make it better outside those constraints likely its patentable and can be open-sourced without hurting your companies concern... losing money.
The other thing is that the GPL requirements may help you in this case... A new device reverse engineered from your opensource driver could be a derivative work... and thus subject to the same requirements that it be "open-sourced", so you can use any improvements they make in your own device. (Not an expert legal opinion though).
I agree. Telnet and ftp are lifesavers at my college, but on sane networks (and not firewalled to local ips) ssh and scp are the only way to access systems and get files... Maybe that's how it should be done. And its only the stupid administrators on the network who allow offsite telnet. SSH Rocks. Use well.
Its also the Linux "fear" that's prevalent among many users. When I first started out using Linux, it was a struggle. Others don't have the time or the inclination. (as a college student I have nothing else to do) And unless Linux wants to sacrifice a lot of what makes it what it is to GUI admin tools and GUI everything else... its not going to eat into the massive Windows base. Can Linux keep its geek look and at the same time move mainstream? is that good for Linux?
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Damage caps are there because companies complain that they are being destroyed by frivolous lawsuits. Poor guys. The frivolous ones generally get tossed. Its the ones where they actually misbehave that they get hit with the large verdicts.
What companies really want is a way to budget for a lawsuit loss. "If I do this illegal thing and someone catches me, what's the worst case for the bottom line." Damage caps therefore allow a company to rationalize a possibility of a lawsuit to a dollar amount.
Sample Budget:
Fraud gain: $450x1000 customers
$450,000
Fraud penalty:
- $350,000(max)
Total gained:
$100,000
That's why damage caps are there.
Note: I don't even think the damages cap applies here. This is a federal case and a Virginia law is capping damages.
No, its actually in the license agreements from MS to the OEM that they must provide a "media-less" install, ie a copy of the os that is not the full operating system, but is one that only works with the system that it shipped with.
The OEMs don't have a choice on this one until the MS antitrust appeal is done, at which MS can't retaliate if an OEM insists that it not be a part of the contract. The antitrust trial could thus stop one more stupid thing by MS.
It is legal to shield anyone under 18 from material so long as it doesn't restrict those over 18. There is no political element to this... unless all violent games were politically oriented, (or could be) then this is legal. Sexually explicit stuff can be censored. The only reason why the Communications Decency Act, etc. have had problems is because Congress used the excuse of stopping kids from seeing explicit images to put a blanket on things all have a right to see and read, like information on prostate surgery. If the law is vague and stops adult access or political speech, it probably is unconstitutional. But if it is very narrow, as this seems to be... then its ok.
The real question is will it do anything... and of course it won't. It'll be like R rated movies and liquor stores, where the only law is the law of the almighty dollar.
Maybe its possible to have the two exist together... Open source doesn't require your internal company tech to be given up... if you have patents, then you can give up the specs and open-source the driver without losing any commerce and in fact will make more money because your drivers will work better and make users happy. Your money is in the device that you sell. So it probably is in the best interests of the company to open source the drivers for a proprietary device.
Maybe the best thing if you have a non-proprietary device (i.e. a sb clone, etc.) is to make the item compatible with a standard device... then you concentrate on making your device faster within those constraints... if you find a way to make it better outside those constraints likely its patentable and can be open-sourced without hurting your companies concern... losing money.
The other thing is that the GPL requirements may help you in this case... A new device reverse engineered from your opensource driver could be a derivative work... and thus subject to the same requirements that it be "open-sourced", so you can use any improvements they make in your own device. (Not an expert legal opinion though).
I agree. Telnet and ftp are lifesavers at my college, but on sane networks (and not firewalled to local ips) ssh and scp are the only way to access systems and get files... Maybe that's how it should be done. And its only the stupid administrators on the network who allow offsite telnet. SSH Rocks. Use well.
Its also the Linux "fear" that's prevalent among many users. When I first started out using Linux, it was a struggle. Others don't have the time or the inclination. (as a college student I have nothing else to do) And unless Linux wants to sacrifice a lot of what makes it what it is to GUI admin tools and GUI everything else... its not going to eat into the massive Windows base. Can Linux keep its geek look and at the same time move mainstream? is that good for Linux?