Actually, they apparently considered the prospect of suing users. From the article: BT said that it would not
pursue patent claims with individual users, as it would "not be practical."
And why don't so-called editors ever do any editing? This may be one of the more irritating examples, but it's pretty clear from the spelling and grammatical errors that are in nearly every piece that submissions run unedited, with at most a bit of editorial comment following.
I don't mean to minimize the effort involved in choosing interesting articles, but being an editor usually involves, well, editing. --meredith
Microsoft would have to admit that source code to more than the unspecified project that won't ship for years was accessed in order to sue anyone, something they're busily denying. The loss of customer confidence would be far more damaging than any gains from suing anyone.
and before
long I gave up sports so I could spend more of my spare time
at the computer learning about programming.
I don't blame him being fascinated by programming, but it would be good if kids like him were finding time in their lives to do sports and other social activities, not just hacking. --meredith
Re:Is spam also free speech?
on
MAPS Sued Again
·
· Score: 1
Hateful speech is also protected under our constitution. You're not required to listen to it, of course, but just because many many people don't want to listen to it doesn't take away its constitutional protection. And the solution isn't to ban free speech, but to find acceptable ways to protect those who don't want to listen to it. One of which, it seems to me, is the MAPS/RBL method. And so I hope they succeed!
that standards for peer-to-peer computing might be set in a particularly non-peer-to-peer method? Or perhaps not ironic at all, if the big corporations consider peer-to-peer a threat.
On the other hand, no one even knows what peer-to-peer computing means, so the idea of creating standards for an amorphous concept seems a bit tenuous. Is file transfer considered "computing"? And is the DNS system already peer-to-peer computing? How about the distributed stuff, such as the Seti@home?
First, let me say that I hate spam and I hope MAPS wins, so please don't flame me as a spam defender. But when I read that MAPS is defending itself by saying that what they're doing is free speech--which it would certainly seem to be--it occurred to me that spam might also be considered free speech, abhorrent as it is. If so, it still doesn't mean that the spammers lawsuit should prevail, because MAPS isn't preventing their speech. And if spam is free speech, are ISPs guilty of
blocking free speech by filtering spam, or does opt-in justify (constitutionally, that is) what they're doing?
I think the conclusion that's being drawn is that if the server doesn't strip the TNEF, the recipient won't be able to read the message. Whether that's true or not remains to be determined; I'm not sure that's an accurate inference from the KB extract.
With some serious 3D crunching, broadband and (I think--the article's verbiage gets a little dense at this point) voice recognition, doesn't this sound like a great opportunity for some serious networked virtual reality? I can live without Quake, but I'd sure buy one to be able to have my own little desktop avatar.
Apparently the DoCoMo is the latest craze in Japan. Fortune magazine reports that the number of DoCoMo phones is growing by 50,000 a day! It's especially popular with teenagers, who use them to participate in chat rooms. Do Japanese technofads tend to spread here?
Never before has an operating system
vendor so completely been able to offer full backward compatibility.
Apple emulating the 68k chip on the PowerPC so that old software would run on new Macs is pretty amazing too. While Apple has orphaned machines on occasion, they certainly put a lot of effort into making things backward compatible without crippling things.
Why is that? Many people would love a Unix with an elegant visual interface. Ease of use with the opportunity to get down and dirty in a shell sounds pretty good to me, as well as to folks who used gnome, kde, etc. I dream of the day when I don't have to keep switching back and forth between my Powerbook (graphics tools, authoring tools, etc) and my Linux laptop!
There's a long tradition of advertisers trying to influence the editorial side of publications, so this is nothing new. I just hope that the publications in question resist the pressure and that Apple (assuming that TBWA/Chiat/Day's threat is at their behest) back off of this immediately. I can understand Apple seeking to enforce NDAs, but not their intruding on the freedom of the press.
Was its market share too small to bother mentioning, or was it just not counted at all? Anyone have any idea (other than "IDC") where they got their numbers from?
Well, to (attempt to be) fair, the CNET article reports that there was both a test and a glitch. One might well guess that the glitch was a bug in code changes for the test. Also, the article says that the glitches led to lower prices, not higher ones. OTOH, Amazon was apparently demanding that people pay the "correct" higher price rather than the one they had agreed to pay or cancel their order.
A botch, to be sure. But not necessarily a cover-up.
I've seen endless comments here about the braind-amaged rulings that keep getting made about IP issues and such. Perhaps if the court had better knowledge of the issues involved and the potential implications, high-priced corporate lawyers wouldn't be able to get away with inaccurate technojargon and better rulings might result? I mean, it's not like the rulings on these sorts of issues (with the exception of the Microsoft one) have been all that great, y'know.
The Apple software is not intended for us in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control systems, life support machines or other equipment in which the failure of the Apple software could lead to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage.
I'm glad UT isn't playing Big Brother, but I'd be really pissed if I were a student in a UT dorm and not getting any bandwidth because of pirates. Just because some of the students don't mind grinding their network to a halt doesn't mean I have to suffer also, does it? What's wrong with limiting the bandwidth snarfed by each node?
Perhaps because, at least in part,/. headlines are available for posting on other sites via RDF and it's kind of rude to force other sites to either put obscenities on their pages?
And I don't see that trying to be a little polite (not that f*ck* is much of a figleaf) counts as "censorship". What information has been surpressed?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they apparently considered the prospect of suing users. From the article: BT said that it would not pursue patent claims with individual users, as it would "not be practical."
--meredith
That's true of everyone. But they add up, you know.
--meredith
And why don't so-called editors ever do any editing? This may be one of the more irritating examples, but it's pretty clear from the spelling and grammatical errors that are in nearly every piece that submissions run unedited, with at most a bit of editorial comment following.
I don't mean to minimize the effort involved in choosing interesting articles, but being an editor usually involves, well, editing.
--meredith
Does Guinness know about this?
Looks around nervously...am I allowed to say that? Please don't sue me!
--meredith
Microsoft would have to admit that source code to more than the unspecified project that won't ship for years was accessed in order to sue anyone, something they're busily denying. The loss of customer confidence would be far more damaging than any gains from suing anyone.
--meredith
and before long I gave up sports so I could spend more of my spare time at the computer learning about programming.
I don't blame him being fascinated by programming, but it would be good if kids like him were finding time in their lives to do sports and other social activities, not just hacking.
--meredith
Hateful speech is also protected under our constitution. You're not required to listen to it, of course, but just because many many people don't want to listen to it doesn't take away its constitutional protection. And the solution isn't to ban free speech, but to find acceptable ways to protect those who don't want to listen to it. One of which, it seems to me, is the MAPS/RBL method. And so I hope they succeed!
--meredith
that standards for peer-to-peer computing might be set in a particularly non-peer-to-peer method? Or perhaps not ironic at all, if the big corporations consider peer-to-peer a threat.
On the other hand, no one even knows what peer-to-peer computing means, so the idea of creating standards for an amorphous concept seems a bit tenuous. Is file transfer considered "computing"? And is the DNS system already peer-to-peer computing? How about the distributed stuff, such as the Seti@home?
--meredith
First, let me say that I hate spam and I hope MAPS wins, so please don't flame me as a spam defender. But when I read that MAPS is defending itself by saying that what they're doing is free speech--which it would certainly seem to be--it occurred to me that spam might also be considered free speech, abhorrent as it is. If so, it still doesn't mean that the spammers lawsuit should prevail, because MAPS isn't preventing their speech. And if spam is free speech, are ISPs guilty of blocking free speech by filtering spam, or does opt-in justify (constitutionally, that is) what they're doing?
--meredith
to the CNET story (which is actually from Bloomberg News but fairly content free AND from the 18th)
--meredith
I think the conclusion that's being drawn is that if the server doesn't strip the TNEF, the recipient won't be able to read the message. Whether that's true or not remains to be determined; I'm not sure that's an accurate inference from the KB extract.
--meredith
How does the recipient decrypt the message without the decoder key?
--meredith
Er, didn't you notice the 5-ton gorilla named Microsoft in the corner?
--meredith
With some serious 3D crunching, broadband and (I think--the article's verbiage gets a little dense at this point) voice recognition, doesn't this sound like a great opportunity for some serious networked virtual reality? I can live without Quake, but I'd sure buy one to be able to have my own little desktop avatar.
--meredith
Apparently the DoCoMo is the latest craze in Japan. Fortune magazine reports that the number of DoCoMo phones is growing by 50,000 a day! It's especially popular with teenagers, who use them to participate in chat rooms. Do Japanese technofads tend to spread here?
--meredith
Apple emulating the 68k chip on the PowerPC so that old software would run on new Macs is pretty amazing too. While Apple has orphaned machines on occasion, they certainly put a lot of effort into making things backward compatible without crippling things.
--meredith
Why is that? Many people would love a Unix with an elegant visual interface. Ease of use with the opportunity to get down and dirty in a shell sounds pretty good to me, as well as to folks who used gnome, kde, etc. I dream of the day when I don't have to keep switching back and forth between my Powerbook (graphics tools, authoring tools, etc) and my Linux laptop!
--meredith
...is this
--meredith
There's a long tradition of advertisers trying to influence the editorial side of publications, so this is nothing new. I just hope that the publications in question resist the pressure and that Apple (assuming that TBWA/Chiat/Day's threat is at their behest) back off of this immediately. I can understand Apple seeking to enforce NDAs, but not their intruding on the freedom of the press.
--meredith
Was its market share too small to bother mentioning, or was it just not counted at all? Anyone have any idea (other than "IDC") where they got their numbers from?
--meredith
Well, to (attempt to be) fair, the CNET article reports that there was both a test and a glitch. One might well guess that the glitch was a bug in code changes for the test. Also, the article says that the glitches led to lower prices, not higher ones. OTOH, Amazon was apparently demanding that people pay the "correct" higher price rather than the one they had agreed to pay or cancel their order.
A botch, to be sure. But not necessarily a cover-up.
--meredith
(cringes at the wrath she may receive)
I've seen endless comments here about the braind-amaged rulings that keep getting made about IP issues and such. Perhaps if the court had better knowledge of the issues involved and the potential implications, high-priced corporate lawyers wouldn't be able to get away with inaccurate technojargon and better rulings might result? I mean, it's not like the rulings on these sorts of issues (with the exception of the Microsoft one) have been all that great, y'know.
--meredith
From the license agreement:
The Apple software is not intended for us in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control systems, life support machines or other equipment in which the failure of the Apple software could lead to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage.
--meredith
I'm glad UT isn't playing Big Brother, but I'd be really pissed if I were a student in a UT dorm and not getting any bandwidth because of pirates. Just because some of the students don't mind grinding their network to a halt doesn't mean I have to suffer also, does it? What's wrong with limiting the bandwidth snarfed by each node?
--meredith
Perhaps because, at least in part, /. headlines are available for posting on other sites via RDF and it's kind of rude to force other sites to either put obscenities on their pages?
And I don't see that trying to be a little polite (not that f*ck* is much of a figleaf) counts as "censorship". What information has been surpressed?
--meredith