No, they don't. The only area where the European Parliament has any real power is the E.U. budget. In all other cases, all it can do is give advice, which in turn can be ignored...
This is wrong (whoever modded the post up shouldn't have). The powers of the EP are laid out
here.
Basically, it jointly decides EU laws on a co-decision basis with the Council. It has powers over non-compulsory expenditure only,
which basically means the EP can't stop the Common
Agricultural Policy.
Euro MPs are next to useless because the European Parliament is virtually powerless.
This may be true in general terms, but they do have considerable powers to amend European legislation, which is most of the legislation that could harm free software (e.g. Copyright Directive, Software Patent Directive).
this directive will not have any adverse effects on open source software development
So I've written her a letter, suggesting that open source software explicitly be made exempt from patent enforcement. If what she says in her article is true, this would have no effect, so she's got no legitimate reason to oppose it.
My
weblog
has an
article
that goes into this in more detail.
If you want to contact Arlene McCarthy, and
politely tell her your views, she has a
website.
The plot: Aliens come to the earth to steal our water
This is incredibly silly: if they want water, they could simply get it from Europa, or no doubt many places in their own solar system: hydrogen and oxygen aren't exactly rare elements, and if oxygen was rare there, life wouldn't have evolved there anyway.
The knowledge of the offered discount is probably worse than not getting the biz.
And what's even worse is that MS offered a 90% discount and still lost the contract. I doubt they'd be able to give away their software to Munich!... though perhaps they could try paying Munich to use it:-)
This would break nearly every major ISP's SMTP setup.
Spam costs ISPs lots of money; I expect most would reconfigure their servers to help stop it.
how is my work mail server supposed to know what the SMTP ID is of a mail it will never see?
The whole point of my scheme is to prevent people using a mail address other than what they are actually posting on; if you want to use your work email address, make it a Reply-To:, and have the From: field contain the address you are really posting from.
A large portion of spam gets sent out under real email addresses that do not belong to the spammer.
The solution is to use a finger-like protocol that:
Checks that the username is valid
Checks that the message-id for the email recieved is one sent from that username (the server would have to keep a list of all message-ids sent from it in the last month or so)
Then, if a spammer forges someone's address, they have to know a valid message-id for that user, which is difficult to do.
(One way a spammer might know it is to read on the web mailing list archives to which the user posts; to get round this, the finger-like protocol could also be asked to verify a 128-hash code of the message contents).
If Microsoft want to put Unix-like functionality on Windows, they could just use BSD, and not pay license fees. Now Bill Gates doesn't have a reputation for spending money unnecessarily, so there's some other reason.
Perhaps SCO's suit against IBM and threats against Linux users is something MS have put them up to. MS have a motive for doing this as they hate and fear Linux..
If this theory is correct, MS's payment to SCO is really a reward for disrupting Linux; the SCO Unix license is just to disguise what MS are really buying.
From a point of view of avoiding personal hassle to
oneself, it might be best to pretend one has seen
nothing, in situations where that is plausible.
I really don't see how it is possible for an employee to get out of the situation of being sacked for one reason, if the company says the reason is another -- since the employee cannot prove why they are really being sacked.
Consumers shouldn't be worried that Microsoft Corp.'s new security technology will wrest control of their PCs and give it to media companies, said Bill Gates
When I buy Microsoft products, I know I can trust them to shaft me with shoddy software, vendor lock-in, DRM, gratuitously incompatible file formats, etc.
I think 'the one ring' could be rather appropriate for palladium... what's your opinion ?
Yeah, it's a similar idea: the One Ring was essentially a backdoor into the other Rings of Power, and MS Windows contains backdoors so Microsoft and control people using it.
Also, Gates is, like Sauron, evil.
Re:The name has been changed because it was too se
on
Palladium Changes Name
·
· Score: 1
What does 'Jackboot' mean ?
It's a stiff, high boot, associated with the military, especially Nazi Germany.
Hey, I've just had an idea : why not picking some name involving 'Soma' or 'Our Ford' or anything else from the 'brave new world' book by Huxley ?
I suspect this would be too obscure
Re:The name has been changed because it was too se
on
Palladium Changes Name
·
· Score: 3, Funny
How about "Jackboot OS"?
In a similar vein, Intel's hardware implementation could be called "Big Brother Inside" or "Gestapo Inside" or somesuch.
A survey found that 92% of apologists for the
content industries thought that making unauthorised
copies was morally equivalent to taking a ship by force, often brutally raping and murdering its crew.
It's obviously written by a marketing person who hasn't read the
Cluetrain Manifesto. The answers all read like ``United Linux is wonderful, the sun shines out of it's arse''.
There is no discussion of questions that no doubt will be frequently answered, such as:
Which configuration tool will it use? (Yast2 perhaps)
How with the different companies make their versions of United Linux different from each other? Will they each use proprietary software to do so?
If the different companies do differentiate between their versions of United Linux, each
including different software as ``added value'', won't this be a return of the Unix wars of the past?
Re:Obligatory spelling flame
on
Mini Microbes
·
· Score: 2
It's viruses, not virii.
Indeed it is. People who say "virii" are scum and should be punished by being forced to use inferior software such as MicroShit Windows. With IE kept in, of course.
I know it's not open source, but have you tried the Summarize feature in Microsoft Word? I fed it the entire contents of
the GNU website
and it came back with:
GNU is rubbish. Don't use the viral GPL! Bill is
your friend. You love Bill. Microsoft software is the best.
Slashdot Mirror
No, they don't. The only area where the European Parliament has any real power is the E.U. budget. In all other cases, all it can do is give advice, which in turn can be ignored...
This is wrong (whoever modded the post up shouldn't have). The powers of the EP are laid out here.
Basically, it jointly decides EU laws on a co-decision basis with the Council. It has powers over non-compulsory expenditure only, which basically means the EP can't stop the Common Agricultural Policy.
we can safely ignore the warblings of this MEP
Yes, until they make copyright or patent laws that criminalise a good deal of Free Software.
People, this proposal, and similar laws in other countries, are a serious threat to Free Software. We ignore them at our peril.
Euro MPs are next to useless because the European Parliament is virtually powerless.
This may be true in general terms, but they do have considerable powers to amend European legislation, which is most of the legislation that could harm free software (e.g. Copyright Directive, Software Patent Directive).
In her article, she says that:
So I've written her a letter, suggesting that open source software explicitly be made exempt from patent enforcement. If what she says in her article is true, this would have no effect, so she's got no legitimate reason to oppose it.
My weblog has an article that goes into this in more detail.
If you want to contact Arlene McCarthy, and politely tell her your views, she has a website.
Does this mean that Linus can now sue SCO for a billion dollars?
In other news, SCO have announced they are changing their name to reflect changes in their business model. The new name will be SCUM.
The plot: Aliens come to the earth to steal our water
This is incredibly silly: if they want water, they could simply get it from Europa, or no doubt many places in their own solar system: hydrogen and oxygen aren't exactly rare elements, and if oxygen was rare there, life wouldn't have evolved there anyway.
The knowledge of the offered discount is probably worse than not getting the biz.
And what's even worse is that MS offered a 90% discount and still lost the contract. I doubt they'd be able to give away their software to Munich!... though perhaps they could try paying Munich to use it :-)
This would break nearly every major ISP's SMTP setup.
Spam costs ISPs lots of money; I expect most would reconfigure their servers to help stop it.
how is my work mail server supposed to know what the SMTP ID is of a mail it will never see?
The whole point of my scheme is to prevent people using a mail address other than what they are actually posting on; if you want to use your work email address, make it a Reply-To:, and have the From: field contain the address you are really posting from.
A large portion of spam gets sent out under real email addresses that do not belong to the spammer.
The solution is to use a finger-like protocol that:
Then, if a spammer forges someone's address, they have to know a valid message-id for that user, which is difficult to do.
(One way a spammer might know it is to read on the web mailing list archives to which the user posts; to get round this, the finger-like protocol could also be asked to verify a 128-hash code of the message contents).
Why are Microsoft paying SCO for a Unix license?
If Microsoft want to put Unix-like functionality on Windows, they could just use BSD, and not pay license fees. Now Bill Gates doesn't have a reputation for spending money unnecessarily, so there's some other reason.
Perhaps SCO's suit against IBM and threats against Linux users is something MS have put them up to. MS have a motive for doing this as they hate and fear Linux..
If this theory is correct, MS's payment to SCO is really a reward for disrupting Linux; the SCO Unix license is just to disguise what MS are really buying.
From a point of view of avoiding personal hassle to oneself, it might be best to pretend one has seen nothing, in situations where that is plausible.
I really don't see how it is possible for an employee to get out of the situation of being sacked for one reason, if the company says the reason is another -- since the employee cannot prove why they are really being sacked.
I agree, too. That's why I write all my programs in machine code.
Consumers shouldn't be worried that Microsoft Corp.'s new security technology will wrest control of their PCs and give it to media companies, said Bill Gates
I've already chosen not to use it; I use Linux.
When I buy Microsoft products, I know I can trust them to shaft me with shoddy software, vendor lock-in, DRM, gratuitously incompatible file formats, etc.
The US State Department has a mandate to support exports of American products.
Isn't Red Hat an American product? Or is it the US State Department's policy to favour some US suppliers over others?
I think 'the one ring' could be rather appropriate for palladium... what's your opinion ?
Yeah, it's a similar idea: the One Ring was essentially a backdoor into the other Rings of Power, and MS Windows contains backdoors so Microsoft and control people using it.
Also, Gates is, like Sauron, evil.
What does 'Jackboot' mean ?
It's a stiff, high boot, associated with the military, especially Nazi Germany.
Hey, I've just had an idea : why not picking some name involving 'Soma' or 'Our Ford' or anything else from the 'brave new world' book by Huxley ?
I suspect this would be too obscure
In a similar vein, Intel's hardware implementation could be called "Big Brother Inside" or "Gestapo Inside" or somesuch.
If Bill wants a more descriptive name for Palladium, may I suggest calling it:
A survey found that 92% of apologists for the content industries thought that making unauthorised copies was morally equivalent to taking a ship by force, often brutally raping and murdering its crew.
I've just read the United Linux FAQ.
It's obviously written by a marketing person who hasn't read the Cluetrain Manifesto. The answers all read like ``United Linux is wonderful, the sun shines out of it's arse''.
There is no discussion of questions that no doubt will be frequently answered, such as:
It's viruses, not virii.
Indeed it is. People who say "virii" are scum and should be punished by being forced to use inferior software such as MicroShit Windows. With IE kept in, of course.
Encryption by itself is too difficult and esoteric for normal users. If you want to see it spread, make it easy to use and easy to understand.
That's why I'm developing Herbivore, a zero-effort mail encryption system.
I know it's not open source, but have you tried the Summarize feature in Microsoft Word? I fed it the entire contents of the GNU website and it came back with:
After all, people put Debian on CDs and DVDs