If that were true, RIAA would have simply side-stepped the Verizon issue, presented a judge with their evidence that copyright infringement has occurred, and asked the judge to sign a subpoena.
Why would they? They're just looking for names using the law as written.
It's absolutely not in RIAA's interests, nor is it ethical, for them to not pursue the rights given to them in law when they are attempting to exercise those rights. It'd be like only enforcing speed limits on the company campus against the employees of competitors.
RIAA didn't sidestep the issue because they do not want to lose this ridiculous power granted to them by the DMCA, and withdrawing the clerk-signed subpoena in favor of a judge-signed one would set a precedent they don't want set.
If a kilogram of bricks is put on a scale beside a kilogram of feathers on a scale, the readout from the two scales (aka, the weight) will be equal.
Yes, if you fit them all on a scale. Put the pound of feathers on a fragile surface, and it will hold--put the pound of brick on the same surface, and it may not.
The metric system isn't silly with respect to mass and weight, it keeps them seperate.
Except when it comes to common usage. It's good for measuring goods and all that, but the language hasn't been adapted to it. To be anal, you don't weigh any kilograms--you weigh, IIRC, some number of Newtons.
I don't mean to sound like I'm flaming here or anything, but the popular confusion of mass and weight, especially in the Imperial unit system, really bothers me.
It's not really something that matters. We buy an ammount--and, for everything save space travel, measuring in weight or in mass is essentially the same.
Yep. The alleged pirates. The truth of the allegation is for a jury to determine.
Remember: This whole RIAA/Verizon stint has been RIAA wanting to find the real people so it can file claims against them. It's comparable to tracking down the owner of a fax line that was mass-spamming the script for _The Matrix Revolutions_.
RIAA is certainly alowed to make mistakes, and they're not going to be locked up for them any sooner than you are going to be locked up for calling their claims spurious.
Which, btw, is when they've gone too far--when they purposefuly take someone to court whom they know to be innocent.
Reminds me of the old trick question you use to catch kids: "What weighs more: a kilogram of bricks or a kilogram of feathers?"
Well, if you define "weight" as "force on the thing carrying the mass", the brick weighs more because it's more concentrated. (And, of course, if you factor in the carrying materal, the feathers may weigh more.)
Silly metric system and their silly mass-for-weight idea. A pound of brick and a pound of feathers will have the same weight--but may have quite different mass.
Hmm... I guess the smart-alec response to your joke query is "which one is higher?"
God I wish I could pull the wool over my eyes like that... and do they still have these morals when they take bribes from corporations to protect corporate interests or no?
Yep. Y'see, NOT everyone takes bribes. (It is criminal, after all, and nothing clears up an incumbent's seat like a bribery scandal.)
Do they still have those morals when they order back alley murders to keep things from going public?
Sure. I can think of a few moral codes that would permit that.
Like I said, not everyone's morals are the same. For some, "saving face" is more important than "learning the truth." For others, "saving lives" is worth "one death."
Do they have them when they trample the constitution at every point possible? Like maintaining a military force besides the navy for a period of more than 2yrs outside of wartime?
You mean Article 1, Section 8, Clase 12?
"The Congress shall have Power... To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years... " (clauses before and after 12 omitted.)
The military submits its budget at least as frequently as every two years. I don't see a clause that says that The Congress may not keep re-appropriating money for the same military every two years--do you?
Do you mean the country where I'm free to say what I want, unless they decide I'm not, or someone is upset by what I have to say with enough money to stop me?
You are free to express yourself--but this freedom does not, and never has, led itself to slander, libel, treason, copyright infringement, or mandatory audiences.
We are not a democracy, like every politition would tell you, we are not a republic, like the pledge of allegiance and founding documents tell you, we are a capitalist country, through and through. Our morals are for sale to the highest bidder and this keeps us living in comfort, as a society we've collectively sold out humanity for our benefit time and time again. It's more important to us that we have cars, and lights, and internet, and roads, and skyscrapers, and a strong economy. We automatically associate the terms "value" and "worth" with money.
"Collectively sold out humanity?" Man, I didn't know humanity was collective.
We are a democracy. This is best evidenced by our tendency towards mob rule, political deceptions, and just barely keeping back the tyranny of the majority.
But, since we're an eminently moral nation, we swallow down what we want to do and do what we feel is right; or, rather, our elected offical does, as whenever you get a sufficient number of equals in a room, Democracy takes over and factionism sets in. (Just look at Congress.)
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion. But, please, if you do wind up slapped in Levenworth for insulting the government, do give me a ring with that last phone call.
The fans needed Metallica's faith back in the day, and they didn't give it to us.
To continue your overgeneralization, we didn't give it to them, either.
Remember: their track from MI:2 wound up on Napster before they were even done with it. If some dipshit fanboy loser hadn't shared songs that weren't even finshed by Metallica, Madonna, Dr.Dre, et cetera, the RIAA would never have bothered about P2P and Napster would still be king.
Sure, Lars is a bit of a technophobie luddite--but considering how well programmers sing, I'd rather a luddite doing the music.
You know what, im sick of this 'unprofessional' trash. "Professional" is inhuman. Usually, any act of honesty is described as 'unprofessional' Im tired of my personal relations being filtered through the Blanket-of-Commerce that requires people to be a cog or a tool.
You misunderstand what "professional" means.
Honesty is emminently professional. But so is keeping priviledged and semi-priviledged information as such. Essentially, "professional" can be summarized best as "thinks of the job when on the job", rather than "inhuman."
I guess I didn't embrace the dot bomb generation or something. I can't generate any feeling of respect for a "company executive" that runs a weblog and moans about corporate issues publicly. It just isn't professional.
Executives don't write software.
He is, at worst, a software programmer who manages a division. In the software world--especially the free software world--keeping a weblog and being honest in it have come to be hallmarks of a professional.
I'm not trying to defend Microsoft here -- they certainly were acting in an anticompetitive manner -- but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Redhat starts to get into antitrust problems.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to point this out...
But MS's behavior was ONLY illegal because they were found to be a monopoly. RedHat, Apple, or even IBM could do exactly the same thing, and because none of them are monopolies, they'd get off scott free.
Then the Palm OS market changed when Sony came along, they pulled the 6 Million Dollar Man on the competitors. They made their handheld, faster, smaller and added functionality the others were lacking. I did my research and at the time bought the Clie PEG-SL10 and I haven't looked back. Palm may of been one of the originators but Sony has been the innovator.
I've got a PEG-S360, and the headache of finding anything that works with it (like, oh, screen covers) has convinced me never to buy another Sony PDA.
Sure, the jog-dial is nice, but it doesn't make up for the absolute incompatability with anything of a "standard" palm shape. It wouldn't be so bad if Sony was consistent--but of the several Sony PDAs at the local stores, no two use the same form factor for anything more than the memory stick.
If I was purchasing a PDA right now, I'd pick up the new Zire from Palm. Form factor's just about right, the camera's nicely integrated, and it's got that spiffy five-way button thing.
(Yeah, and Sony has a few models with comparable features--for 150% - 300% of the cost.)
I think this sale is bad for everyone, competition always spurs more innovation.
Handspring hasn't really been competing for a few years now. Palm buying them is like AOL buying Time-Warner--the market will get a new big player, but it's not about to go away. (Heck, competition between Sony and "nuPalm" will be enough to spur innovation, even if every other Palm OS manufacturer went out of business.)
The USA is a very moral nation. The USA is a nation that believes in free speach. The USA is a nation that is very very big.
These three facts all combine to give us the clusterfuck that is American foreign policy and domestic politics.
Every single offical I've ever met has had a desire to act in a moral fashion. Their moral compass may not always align with mine, but they all have them.
Don't I have the right to profit for the rest of my life from my work?
Hell no. (And I may have you beat on the "time writing a book.")
You have the right to your book, and to control who can make copies of your book, and even a right that if anyone makes money from your book, you get at least a chance to make money as well.
What about my children? What about my grandchildren?
Why should you be able to pass on your copyright to anyone? Doctors spend more time in school than you will on any project, and they don't get to pass on their doctorate to their children.
Science may require some kind of morality or ethics -- just like everything else does; however, Morality and ethics do not require religion.
If by "religion" you mean "theism," then you're right.
But, at the very least, to be moral you need to have some claim as to the worth of others / the whole of humanity. A self-centered viewpoint, which is emminently logical, is the very essence of amorality--and what logically a person will have if they do not believe in the worth and value of SOMETHING other than themselves.
The bare minimum to be moral is not "belief in the almighty" or "belief in the beyond" or even "belief in humanity", but a faith that if you are moral to others then others will be moral to you.
Thankfully, this can be proven through observation of how humans behave socially.
Historically, of course, great moral humans (who set the tone for the whole of our society) have been rather religious--and those that have not have had a "religous feeling" towards something else greater than themselves.
And, as for the "relion fantaics" meddling in medicine--it's just a semi-religous argument as to the personage status of a fetus. If a fetus is a living person, then it's unethical to kill them or profit from their death. If it's not as person, it is ethical to euthanise them and learn / profit from their death.
The religious overtones of the arugment are coincidences--the various clergy could just as easily be arguing that a fetus is no more than a part of the mother, and can be treated as a spare kidney or bundle of hair.
If I wrote a book about science fiction and love and I say it's a science fiction story, then it IS a science fiction story, not matter how many readers may think it's a love story. The author decides what their product is!
You picked a really, really bad example.
The author picks what they want ("I'm going to write sci fi!"), but that's no guarantee that they won't end up with some other genre. ("Ok, It's a sci-fi story about a woman living on mars, and how she falls in love with a wandering network repair guy...")
A smart agent/publisher will see this, and let the author know. The author will then let the book sell as a hot-button romance novel, or refuse to swallow their pride and make the necessary alterations for the novel to be sci-fi.
"Mozilla" may not be an end-user product, but the bundled testing suite that they distribute sure as heck is. Though, since they're not intending it to be such, and it's OSS anyway, support is not necessary.
The American government is officially totalitarian This is not a nightmare It really is this bad
Please don't insult the suffering of all those who have actually lived under totalitarian rule.
So, if you happen to act like a terrorist the government will treat you one. They might even be blatantly racist and overzealous. But they're not totalitarian.
Dissent is still very much a part of America--and no one, yet, has been punished just for speaking out against the government. (Well, not citizens by the government. A few university professors and private citizens have lost their jobs, and a few immigrants have been forcefully emmigrated, but you get the point.)
(Not that Republican domination isn't that scary--[just what we need, tax cuts in wartime]--but it's not quite totalitarian. Might as well call Canada Communist.)
Artificially segregating markets so you can charge more in some market segments (eg region encoding) is illegal in most jurisdictions AFAIK. (Hence regionless players are perfectly legal here in New Zealand)
Regionless players are prefectly legal here in the USA, too. They just run the risk of losing their license.
Forcing a customer to buy one product in order to use another product (eg "Approved" DVD players) is also illegal in most jurisdictions AFAIK (Hence MS can't sue codeweavers)
Nintendo can sue the author of an emulator, though. And Apple gets away with requiring the purchase of Apple hardware to run OSX. And somehow Sony manages to keep folks who like memory sticks tied to Sony.
I think that the law just doesn't touch the interopabiilty issue, which means that the CSS scheme ("you must buy a CSS player, and we're really conservative about who we sell the recipie to") is perfectly legal.
(I wonder sometimes if, on the odd chance that some screwball actually took a random 'net post as legal advice, the alleged-offender [who 'acted as a lawyer without passing the bar' or whatnot] could countersue for idiocy and slander?)
First, shrinkwrap licenses have not yet been tested in court.
Depends on where you live. Some places they've been found as good, others they've been tossed out.
AFAIK, a shrink-wrap license is an offer; you can go and get a refund as per the terms say, as long as you didn't click "accept."
A much, MUCH better way, btw, would be to require real licensing, with a name in a database and everything. But, no, we can't have that--too many "privacy considerations." *sigh*
IANAL Either, but I've taken a few "business law coureses" that were taught by lawyers.
A contract in the USA requires four things:
1: Offer ("Would you like to buy this DVD for $20?") 2: Acceptance ("Yes, I would; here's my $20") 3: Consideration (Each part gets something; you get a DVD, they get $20) 4: Legal Purpose (Laws to kill people are automatically nullified.)
Signatures help prove the existance and terms, and expiration dates help keep "legal purpose", but they're not required for contracts. When you go to a gas pump and fill up your tank, you've got an implicit contract to go and pay. (if you don't, the store can take you to civil court and sue you for the cost of the gas + punitive damages.)
Courts regularly review contracts, and throw certain catagories out as a matter of policy, others on a matter of law, etc, etc. So, even if we did have a contract where I sell you my firstborn son, it'd very likely be nullified due to legal implications. (OTOH, if it's a "you pay my wife to have the child we were planing to abort and then you adopt it" kind of deal, it might get through.)
Re:Cringley, Linus, and Christoph Hellwig
on
Today's SCO News
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· Score: 1
Windows if you need a specific app not available anywhere else, Mac for end users and UNIX for the backend, power users and task specific stations. Any other IT strategy shows a lack of knowledge/skills.
or a desire for easier helpdesking and non-engineer maintenance.
Windows and Novell, Windows and Linux, Apple and Linux (or Novell), or all Windows / all Apple / all Linux are all possible, and reasonable, configurations for a non-billionare company.
This is a legitimate use, just as hammers and shovels and pry bars also have legit uses.
Not necessarily.
CSS is an encryption system, designed to ensure that DVDs are played only in players sold in the intended market.
The MPAA and the DVD consortium make no secret about CSS's existance and their region-encoding scheme, and anyone competent and aware enough to run Linux has no excuse to not know this.
If CSS is a legitimate tool, and region-encoding / player certification are legal business tools, then DeCSS is not a legitimate use. Even if it's found to be legal and legitimate somewhere, it may still be illegal somewhere else.
And, AFAIK, public perception is relevant to legal decision. If a noticable majority percieved DeCSS as a free speech issue, few courts would treat it as something else.
Mozilla's not going anywhere. Having a full fledged IE / Outlook replacement for everyone not tethered to an exchange server is a Very Good Thing. MS gains far more from AOL using IE than AOL does, and they always have.
This deal just gives AOL seven years to decide if/when they want to switch over to IE.
Slashdot Mirror
Knowing the ISP, they'll probably hand over the names, and disconnect your service in the process for violating TOS.
At which point, they get hauled into court (Even small claims court) for sacking a user _for being investigated._
RIAA cannot and should not be held responsible for the actions of idiot ISPs. The ISPs should be.
If that were true, RIAA would have simply side-stepped the Verizon issue, presented a judge with their evidence that copyright infringement has occurred, and asked the judge to sign a subpoena.
Why would they? They're just looking for names using the law as written.
It's absolutely not in RIAA's interests, nor is it ethical, for them to not pursue the rights given to them in law when they are attempting to exercise those rights. It'd be like only enforcing speed limits on the company campus against the employees of competitors.
RIAA didn't sidestep the issue because they do not want to lose this ridiculous power granted to them by the DMCA, and withdrawing the clerk-signed subpoena in favor of a judge-signed one would set a precedent they don't want set.
Yes, exactly.
If a kilogram of bricks is put on a scale beside a kilogram of feathers on a scale, the readout from the two scales (aka, the weight) will be equal.
Yes, if you fit them all on a scale. Put the pound of feathers on a fragile surface, and it will hold--put the pound of brick on the same surface, and it may not.
The metric system isn't silly with respect to mass and weight, it keeps them seperate.
Except when it comes to common usage. It's good for measuring goods and all that, but the language hasn't been adapted to it. To be anal, you don't weigh any kilograms--you weigh, IIRC, some number of Newtons.
I don't mean to sound like I'm flaming here or anything, but the popular confusion of mass and weight, especially in the Imperial unit system, really bothers me.
It's not really something that matters. We buy an ammount--and, for everything save space travel, measuring in weight or in mass is essentially the same.
Pirates by whose account? Their good guess?
Yep. The alleged pirates. The truth of the allegation is for a jury to determine.
Remember: This whole RIAA/Verizon stint has been RIAA wanting to find the real people so it can file claims against them. It's comparable to tracking down the owner of a fax line that was mass-spamming the script for _The Matrix Revolutions_.
RIAA is certainly alowed to make mistakes, and they're not going to be locked up for them any sooner than you are going to be locked up for calling their claims spurious.
Which, btw, is when they've gone too far--when they purposefuly take someone to court whom they know to be innocent.
Reminds me of the old trick question you use to catch kids: "What weighs more: a kilogram of bricks or a kilogram of feathers?"
Well, if you define "weight" as "force on the thing carrying the mass", the brick weighs more because it's more concentrated. (And, of course, if you factor in the carrying materal, the feathers may weigh more.)
Silly metric system and their silly mass-for-weight idea. A pound of brick and a pound of feathers will have the same weight--but may have quite different mass.
Hmm... I guess the smart-alec response to your joke query is "which one is higher?"
How can we call this safe? How can you feel patriotism at a time like this?
Three reasons.
1: The President still needs to go back to Congress for money.
2: We just went back and finished what we started 12 years ago.
3: The President has to run for re-election next year, and will certainly be gone four years after that.
God I wish I could pull the wool over my eyes like that... and do they still have these morals when they take bribes from corporations to protect corporate interests or no?
... To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years ... " (clauses before and after 12 omitted.)
Yep. Y'see, NOT everyone takes bribes. (It is criminal, after all, and nothing clears up an incumbent's seat like a bribery scandal.)
Do they still have those morals when they order back alley murders to keep things from going public?
Sure. I can think of a few moral codes that would permit that.
Like I said, not everyone's morals are the same. For some, "saving face" is more important than "learning the truth." For others, "saving lives" is worth "one death."
Do they have them when they trample the constitution at every point possible? Like maintaining a military force besides the navy for a period of more than 2yrs outside of wartime?
You mean Article 1, Section 8, Clase 12?
"The Congress shall have Power
The military submits its budget at least as frequently as every two years. I don't see a clause that says that The Congress may not keep re-appropriating money for the same military every two years--do you?
Do you mean the country where I'm free to say what I want, unless they decide I'm not, or someone is upset by what I have to say with enough money to stop me?
You are free to express yourself--but this freedom does not, and never has, led itself to slander, libel, treason, copyright infringement, or mandatory audiences.
We are not a democracy, like every politition would tell you, we are not a republic, like the pledge of allegiance and founding documents tell you, we are a capitalist country, through and through. Our morals are for sale to the highest bidder and this keeps us living in comfort, as a society we've collectively sold out humanity for our benefit time and time again. It's more important to us that we have cars, and lights, and internet, and roads, and skyscrapers, and a strong economy. We automatically associate the terms "value" and "worth" with money.
"Collectively sold out humanity?" Man, I didn't know humanity was collective.
We are a democracy. This is best evidenced by our tendency towards mob rule, political deceptions, and just barely keeping back the tyranny of the majority.
But, since we're an eminently moral nation, we swallow down what we want to do and do what we feel is right; or, rather, our elected offical does, as whenever you get a sufficient number of equals in a room, Democracy takes over and factionism sets in. (Just look at Congress.)
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion. But, please, if you do wind up slapped in Levenworth for insulting the government, do give me a ring with that last phone call.
The fans needed Metallica's faith back in the day, and they didn't give it to us.
To continue your overgeneralization, we didn't give it to them, either.
Remember: their track from MI:2 wound up on Napster before they were even done with it. If some dipshit fanboy loser hadn't shared songs that weren't even finshed by Metallica, Madonna, Dr.Dre, et cetera, the RIAA would never have bothered about P2P and Napster would still be king.
Sure, Lars is a bit of a technophobie luddite--but considering how well programmers sing, I'd rather a luddite doing the music.
You know what, im sick of this 'unprofessional' trash. "Professional" is inhuman. Usually, any act of honesty is described as 'unprofessional' Im tired of my personal relations being filtered through the Blanket-of-Commerce that requires people to be a cog or a tool.
You misunderstand what "professional" means.
Honesty is emminently professional. But so is keeping priviledged and semi-priviledged information as such. Essentially, "professional" can be summarized best as "thinks of the job when on the job", rather than "inhuman."
I guess I didn't embrace the dot bomb generation or something. I can't generate any feeling of respect for a "company executive" that runs a weblog and moans about corporate issues publicly. It just isn't professional.
Executives don't write software.
He is, at worst, a software programmer who manages a division. In the software world--especially the free software world--keeping a weblog and being honest in it have come to be hallmarks of a professional.
I'm not trying to defend Microsoft here -- they certainly were acting in an anticompetitive manner -- but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Redhat starts to get into antitrust problems.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to point this out...
But MS's behavior was ONLY illegal because they were found to be a monopoly. RedHat, Apple, or even IBM could do exactly the same thing, and because none of them are monopolies, they'd get off scott free.
Then the Palm OS market changed when Sony came along, they pulled the 6 Million Dollar Man on the competitors. They made their handheld, faster, smaller and added functionality the others were lacking. I did my research and at the time bought the Clie PEG-SL10 and I haven't looked back. Palm may of been one of the originators but Sony has been the innovator.
I've got a PEG-S360, and the headache of finding anything that works with it (like, oh, screen covers) has convinced me never to buy another Sony PDA.
Sure, the jog-dial is nice, but it doesn't make up for the absolute incompatability with anything of a "standard" palm shape. It wouldn't be so bad if Sony was consistent--but of the several Sony PDAs at the local stores, no two use the same form factor for anything more than the memory stick.
If I was purchasing a PDA right now, I'd pick up the new Zire from Palm. Form factor's just about right, the camera's nicely integrated, and it's got that spiffy five-way button thing.
(Yeah, and Sony has a few models with comparable features--for 150% - 300% of the cost.)
I think this sale is bad for everyone, competition always spurs more innovation.
Handspring hasn't really been competing for a few years now. Palm buying them is like AOL buying Time-Warner--the market will get a new big player, but it's not about to go away. (Heck, competition between Sony and "nuPalm" will be enough to spur innovation, even if every other Palm OS manufacturer went out of business.)
The USA is a very moral nation. The USA is a nation that believes in free speach. The USA is a nation that is very very big.
These three facts all combine to give us the clusterfuck that is American foreign policy and domestic politics.
Every single offical I've ever met has had a desire to act in a moral fashion. Their moral compass may not always align with mine, but they all have them.
Don't I have the right to profit for the rest of my life from my work?
Hell no. (And I may have you beat on the "time writing a book.")
You have the right to your book, and to control who can make copies of your book, and even a right that if anyone makes money from your book, you get at least a chance to make money as well.
What about my children? What about my grandchildren?
Why should you be able to pass on your copyright to anyone? Doctors spend more time in school than you will on any project, and they don't get to pass on their doctorate to their children.
Why should anyone inherit something they didn't create?
Because they married the author, and aided in a significant way in its creation.
Because they are children, and fundamentally supported by the author.
Because the author wrote it on his or her deathbed, and as a moral nation we want to never make it profitable to "wait for the author to die."
A better extreme law, IMO, would be to limit copyright to individuals, and not corporations.
Science may require some kind of morality or ethics -- just like everything else does; however, Morality and ethics do not require religion.
If by "religion" you mean "theism," then you're right.
But, at the very least, to be moral you need to have some claim as to the worth of others / the whole of humanity. A self-centered viewpoint, which is emminently logical, is the very essence of amorality--and what logically a person will have if they do not believe in the worth and value of SOMETHING other than themselves.
The bare minimum to be moral is not "belief in the almighty" or "belief in the beyond" or even "belief in humanity", but a faith that if you are moral to others then others will be moral to you.
Thankfully, this can be proven through observation of how humans behave socially.
Historically, of course, great moral humans (who set the tone for the whole of our society) have been rather religious--and those that have not have had a "religous feeling" towards something else greater than themselves.
And, as for the "relion fantaics" meddling in medicine--it's just a semi-religous argument as to the personage status of a fetus. If a fetus is a living person, then it's unethical to kill them or profit from their death. If it's not as person, it is ethical to euthanise them and learn / profit from their death.
The religious overtones of the arugment are coincidences--the various clergy could just as easily be arguing that a fetus is no more than a part of the mother, and can be treated as a spare kidney or bundle of hair.
If I wrote a book about science fiction and love and I say it's a science fiction story, then it IS a science fiction story, not matter how many readers may think it's a love story. The author decides what their product is!
You picked a really, really bad example.
The author picks what they want ("I'm going to write sci fi!"), but that's no guarantee that they won't end up with some other genre. ("Ok, It's a sci-fi story about a woman living on mars, and how she falls in love with a wandering network repair guy...")
A smart agent/publisher will see this, and let the author know. The author will then let the book sell as a hot-button romance novel, or refuse to swallow their pride and make the necessary alterations for the novel to be sci-fi.
"Mozilla" may not be an end-user product, but the bundled testing suite that they distribute sure as heck is. Though, since they're not intending it to be such, and it's OSS anyway, support is not necessary.
The American government is officially totalitarian
This is not a nightmare
It really is this bad
Please don't insult the suffering of all those who have actually lived under totalitarian rule.
So, if you happen to act like a terrorist the government will treat you one. They might even be blatantly racist and overzealous. But they're not totalitarian.
Dissent is still very much a part of America--and no one, yet, has been punished just for speaking out against the government. (Well, not citizens by the government. A few university professors and private citizens have lost their jobs, and a few immigrants have been forcefully emmigrated, but you get the point.)
(Not that Republican domination isn't that scary--[just what we need, tax cuts in wartime]--but it's not quite totalitarian. Might as well call Canada Communist.)
Artificially segregating markets so you can charge more in some market segments (eg region encoding) is illegal in most jurisdictions AFAIK. (Hence regionless players are perfectly legal here in New Zealand)
Regionless players are prefectly legal here in the USA, too. They just run the risk of losing their license.
Forcing a customer to buy one product in order to use another product (eg "Approved" DVD players) is also illegal in most jurisdictions AFAIK (Hence MS can't sue codeweavers)
Nintendo can sue the author of an emulator, though. And Apple gets away with requiring the purchase of Apple hardware to run OSX. And somehow Sony manages to keep folks who like memory sticks tied to Sony.
I think that the law just doesn't touch the interopabiilty issue, which means that the CSS scheme ("you must buy a CSS player, and we're really conservative about who we sell the recipie to") is perfectly legal.
(I wonder sometimes if, on the odd chance that some screwball actually took a random 'net post as legal advice, the alleged-offender [who 'acted as a lawyer without passing the bar' or whatnot] could countersue for idiocy and slander?)
First, shrinkwrap licenses have not yet been tested in court.
Depends on where you live. Some places they've been found as good, others they've been tossed out.
AFAIK, a shrink-wrap license is an offer; you can go and get a refund as per the terms say, as long as you didn't click "accept."
A much, MUCH better way, btw, would be to require real licensing, with a name in a database and everything. But, no, we can't have that--too many "privacy considerations." *sigh*
IANAL Either, but I've taken a few "business law coureses" that were taught by lawyers.
A contract in the USA requires four things:
1: Offer ("Would you like to buy this DVD for $20?")
2: Acceptance ("Yes, I would; here's my $20")
3: Consideration (Each part gets something; you get a DVD, they get $20)
4: Legal Purpose (Laws to kill people are automatically nullified.)
Signatures help prove the existance and terms, and expiration dates help keep "legal purpose", but they're not required for contracts. When you go to a gas pump and fill up your tank, you've got an implicit contract to go and pay. (if you don't, the store can take you to civil court and sue you for the cost of the gas + punitive damages.)
Courts regularly review contracts, and throw certain catagories out as a matter of policy, others on a matter of law, etc, etc. So, even if we did have a contract where I sell you my firstborn son, it'd very likely be nullified due to legal implications. (OTOH, if it's a "you pay my wife to have the child we were planing to abort and then you adopt it" kind of deal, it might get through.)
Windows if you need a specific app not available anywhere else, Mac for end users and UNIX for the backend, power users and task specific stations. Any other IT strategy shows a lack of knowledge/skills.
or a desire for easier helpdesking and non-engineer maintenance.
Windows and Novell, Windows and Linux, Apple and Linux (or Novell), or all Windows / all Apple / all Linux are all possible, and reasonable, configurations for a non-billionare company.
Funny, a small sample for news-reporting purposes is part of the original fair use provision...
This is a legitimate use, just as hammers and shovels and pry bars also have legit uses.
Not necessarily.
CSS is an encryption system, designed to ensure that DVDs are played only in players sold in the intended market.
The MPAA and the DVD consortium make no secret about CSS's existance and their region-encoding scheme, and anyone competent and aware enough to run Linux has no excuse to not know this.
If CSS is a legitimate tool, and region-encoding / player certification are legal business tools, then DeCSS is not a legitimate use. Even if it's found to be legal and legitimate somewhere, it may still be illegal somewhere else.
And, AFAIK, public perception is relevant to legal decision. If a noticable majority percieved DeCSS as a free speech issue, few courts would treat it as something else.
It's a business not a charity.
And MS is AOL's main competition.
Mozilla's not going anywhere. Having a full fledged IE / Outlook replacement for everyone not tethered to an exchange server is a Very Good Thing. MS gains far more from AOL using IE than AOL does, and they always have.
This deal just gives AOL seven years to decide if/when they want to switch over to IE.