He didn't actually draft the law, or the final law, but he worked with the department that lobbied for what eventually became the DMCA.
And yeah, it basically would be high-treason. By destroying the public's trust in the judicial system, the country is significantly weakened.
It's like when people start questioning if their vote actually matters, when vote tampering could have won a close election.
I wouldn't actually recommend the death penalty for it, just life in jail. To me, it seems fair for a traitor who sells out their country for some money.
No problem, I've had discussions with you before so I know you're not just a grammar nazi or anything. Not *just* at any rate.:)
I think fines need to be based on the damage done, and partly on the ability to pay.
There was a pollution case I was reading about where the company dumped semi-toxic waste because paying the fine was cheaper than paying for proper disposal.
That's insane, even my city is smart enough to make the cost of a crime more expensive than compliance with the law. (Driving with a non-hands free cellphone is fined at $150, because that was twice the cost of a hands-free kit when the law was passed.)
I think punishments also need to be scaled to someone's ability to pay. A rich person and a poor person both live the same lifespan (aproximately) and a year in jail hurts both the same way. But a $10k fine might be a year's savings to the poor person, but to the rich person it's a month's worth.
IMHO we should base these things on someone's wealth. A $10k fine for a person making $30k a year becomes a $1.5M fine for a person making $4.5M a year. (Basically, though it should take total assets into account, etc)
I do realize it'd be very hard to properly implement, but nobody ever said law was easy. It might take a ton of investigation to do properly, ditto with the fine based on the ill-gotten gains, but it'd start to make crime an unattractive proposition.
While I feel, on a personal level, for your loss of money, and I understand how that hurts the retirement date... I don't think you should do anything unethical to make more money, or by supporting the wrong people, do anything unethical by proxy.
Now, you did nothing directly to aid MS, but your purchase of their stock, along with many other people, is what drove the price up. People were willing to pay it. Had you not been, and others like you, not been, the price would have been low.
A high stock price *is* in MS's favour, and on a personal level, helps the officers of the company because of their stock options.
I see many people who are fully aware of MS's crimes, and yet don't want them to be punished simply because they own stock. It's like voting for bread and circuses... It's eating away at the stability of society just so you get a slightly larger cut than anyone else.
Because of this, it makes me question the immunity of stockholders. I would consider making it a crime for people to invest in a company they know is breaking the law.
It might have a "chilling effect" on the markets, but the world would continue. People would still want their products, so companies would still make them. Their investors would just demand a lot more oversight so that they could prove they didn't know about any crimes the company had committed.
Oh, and I'd also have tossed Bill in jail for a year for perjury when he lied and had those falsified videos shown.
The long and short of it is that you decided that having more money was worth the ethical cost of supporting someone like BillG. I disagree.
I can't point to anything to prove it, but they've done this in many ways. They tweaked Windows 3.x to not run on DR-DOS (Thanks Ethereal for the nitpick).
They broke Lotus Notes in NT4 SP6.
They added delay loops in MS Office for the Mac to prove that Windows was a better OS (See, it runs Office faster).
The deliberate changes to sabotage a competitor are fairly common knowledge. Check google.
This would be a good idea, if it worked. However executives rarely get punished for their actions and ditto with companies.
Rambus drove their stock very high by illegally pursuing fraudulent patents. I don't see their officers being led off to prison, nor anyone in the business world saying that it's a likely outcome. Why not?
Ditto with MS. If you or I lied to a judge and deliberately fabricated evidence, we'd be behind bars immediately for at least six months. Why didn't Gates even get slapped for it? Or the people who, on his orders, knowingly faked a video 'proving' something.
Toss them in jail, and fine both companies HUGE ammounts (based on their take from the illegal actions, AND on reparations for the companies they've hurt.)
Until this kind of action is common, chances are that anyone who buys stock in a company like MS is endorsing their behaviour. If you do enough research to justify a stock purchase, their illegal activities are fairly obvious.
The good thing about this being sent back is that when it goes through again, there won't be anything worthy of appeal.
I hope MS doesn't get broken up, I agree. I hope they get fines based on the percentage of their business that they unfairly stole from other companies. Simple 100% of the revenue from all the business they wouldn't have had, if they'd not forced competitors out of business with the monopolistic trade practices.
I have little sympathy though, for people who invest in mutual funds without investigating them. I won't invest in a fund which has stock in companies who I wouldn't invest in directly, and I wouldn't invest in companies whose business practices I don't condone. (Think Rambus and Microsoft, etc)
This country (and the world, though less) is getting too willing to say "Oh, I didn't know, it's not my fault." when they should have looked. If it takes a bunch of people losing their shirts over this, so be it. I'm sure they could make most of that back with a class-action lawsuit against the mutal fund, for investing in MS when this case was proceeding. It's the American way after-all. Don't accept responsibility, sue everyone who didn't protect you.
Wow, if only it were that easy. You know, they're trying to make you purchase their OS with any computer, regardless of your planned use. And they'll succeed, because they can buy enough legislators, and rely on the stupid ones not know that you can indeed use a computer without windows.
They're also using monopolistic practices to put other companies out of business, depriving people of choice.
Stomping MS into the ground wouldn't be socialism, it'd be a capitalism held in control by the people, at the expense of one tyranical rich guy and a bunch of greedy share-holders who are willing to overlook outright crime in order to make a buck.
Microsoft is purchasing enough legislators to force people to use their software.
Their suprise software audits are performed with federal marshalls, without MS having to provide proof of wrong-doing. Isn't it a bit scary that a company can buy federal cops to enforce their EULAs?
They're trying to get the government to forbid the GPL and similar open-source licensing agreements. Both so that no government agency (or agency working for the government) can use GPLed software, or release any software under the GPL.
They're also well on the way to switching to a subscription model for software. You can't buy it once and use it, you keep paying.
Combine this with their stance that any computer sold without an OS is one that will be used to pirate an MS product, and you get a situation where you'll be paying a government mandated MS tax on any system you buy, regardless of what you do with it.
There's a lot more they're doing, but it generally involves steps towards having the government mandate that everyone simply owes MS an annual tax, because, after all, the only software is MS's, and if you're not paying for it, you're a criminal.
You (if you are from the US) live in as much of a socialist country as it is a capitalist one.
The government passes many laws controlling businesses, taxes both companies and people, and applies that to improvements for the benefit of the people. That's a socialism.
It's nominally capitalist, but only within fairly strict guidelines.
The only problem is that our government is in the pay of the corporations and they pass laws that help the biggest. Which just shows that it's a corrupt socialism, not that it's not socialist.
This doesn't explain the judge in the 2600 case. He worked for Turner Broadcasting, relating to DVD protection. And TB is a large part of the MPAA.
So that's not bias? And yet he refused to excuse himself from the case, with barely any explanation.
I've hard of judges excusing themselves from cases for such distant relations as their uncle playing golf with a cousin of one of the participants in the trial. In fact, in the inbred political circles in some areas, that's a major problem, finding a judge who can hear a case because they don't have any third-degree relations with anyone involved.
Yet, in this case, the judge was specifically payed to help draft a law, then he's called on by his old bosses to help in enforcing that law. And that's not bias?
That should be treason. I think actions like that should get him removed from the bench and bisbarred.
Sure there is. Just no flat fee that will affect them.
Let's take the Dr. Dos case as an example. Let's say that they increased their immediate market share by 5% by converting DrDos users. Then, they prevented more from switching by continuing this sort of thing. Figure out from similar markets, how much of their user base they gained only by unfairly eliminating the competition.
So, fine them n% of their earnings from their OS.
Then do the same with Office, etc. See how many people use Office because MS tweaked the OS to hurt competitors. Then see how many people use Office because Microsoft removed OS competitors (and thus the office suites that ran on those other OSes).
Fine Microsoft n% of their office-suit sales.
Etc.
It wouldn't kill them, but a fine based on their ill-gotten gains would be a great punishment. It'd not only hurt them, but it'd be a great incentive for other companies to play fair.
It'd also be a HUGE slap to all the assholes who own MS stock and support them, not because they're right, but simply because it's the best thing for their stock portfolio. I'd *LOVE* to remove immunity, for people who knowingly invest in a company involved in illegal actions.
(Man, just consider the Rambus investors, especially the ones who invested a year ago, when they announced their plans and it was public knowledge how they got their patents... those people deserve a bit of jail time along with the officers of the company, the lawyers advising them, and the employees putting this into effect.)
Well, that's what it is. If you follow the law and someone else doesn't, they've got the advantage. So you take them to court... They punish them for their law-breaking, AND make them follow the same rules as anyone else.
Everyone loses if this crooked company wins, because nobody will be able to beat them without being crooked, and they'll end up with a monopoly and be ruthless about enforcing it.
Much like a big software company we're all familiar with.
Theft of Service requires reducing the capacity of the service provider to provide that service.
Psychologists can say what they will, but it's obvious to anyone with a clue than only an idiot would take their morality from law. It's supposed to go the other way, public morality defines law.
Enjoy your stilted little life. I'm sure you'll follow all the UCITA rules... Make sure to never sell a copy of Windows, MS says you don't really own it. And never fast-forward through commercials on a DVD, even if you have one of the players which doesn't enforce that. After all, having that player is almost as good as stealing from the MPAA...
I've never understood how people like you could reconcile something being legal, and thus moral, for a period of time. Then, as soon as a law is passed against it, it suddenly becomes immoral. How exactly does that work? When the MPAA buys a few legislators, does that define universal morality?
The problem with your argument is that people who've actually looked up the meaning of Theft and Stealing know that the words do not mean what you think they do...
Theft is when you unlawfully deprive the owner of property.
In both of your cases, the company involved wasn't deprived of any property.
So it's not theft.
Now, hear me out. I'm not going to make a moral statement here (You can read my other posts if you wish to know my stance.) I'm merely correcting your use of the word.
These things may (or may not be, to you) morally wrong. That would make them... morally wrong. They may be unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work, that'd make them... unauthorized copies.
That article details calling the 900 line, but even with support contracts, most MS tech support reps toe the company line in a distressing fashion.
"Unplug all the unix servers, that'll fix it"
"Upgrade everything to Win2k Adv Serv, that'll fix it"
"Upgrade to SQL Server (from Oracle), that'll fix it."
They seem to have no ability to distinguish which network components could be involved in a problem and are unwilling to accept that you've already localized the problem.
Case in point, there was a problem where two WinNT boxes wouldn't see each other. They both had IPs, they could both ping everything else. They were connected via a 100mbps switch.
We made sure each properly had an IP, that it could reach other machines, that the switch worked, and then swapped ports with two machines that were working just fine. We also tried isolating these two machines on their own switch, to avoid potential IP conflicts.
When we called the support number we honestly described the situation to the tech. He asked what else was on the network. We explained that it was in a different IP range, but on the same switches as a bunch of Linux machines, an Open BSD (firewall for the desktop machines), and a couple Suns (doing something for the other department, dunno what.)
He then proceeded to tell us that it was the other computers, despite our telling him that we had isolated the NT boxes in question on their own switch and we still had the problem, but when we put a third computer on, both of the NT boxes could reach it just fine.
We eventually lied to him, telling him that yes, we had unplugged all the unix machines, etc. (Like we're going to just unplug out company on the say-so of a moron, and like two junior techs would have the authority to do so anyway.) So now jim-bob starts to help, by telling us that Win2k is so much better, etc, that we wouldn't have these problems with it, etc.
When we flat-out refuse to "upgrade" to fix this bug, his advice is that we format the drives and reinstall. ARGH!
We finally convince him that these machines are somewhat important and we can't just wipe them everytime there's a small problem.
After over an hour with this jack-off, we hang-up, problem unresolved.
We get permission from the boss to call someone in... So we look through our list of contacts and grab someone whose card says they deal with networking and windows. Call him up. As we're describing the problem he listens quietly, grunts affirmatively when we describe how we isolated the problem, agrees that it couldn't be any of the other machines.
Then he says, "It sounds like it's an issue with a bad route, type 'route.....'" We do, and then we reboot. Problem solved.
He said that it, whatever it was, was a very common problem where the machines basically forget how to get from A to B. That command zeroed the routing (which didn't show any bad routes) and the reboot brought it back up.
Cost, a 15-minute phone consultation. $45
Microsoft tech support was basically a sales department, staffed with the marketing rejects.
So, don't EVER believe it if someone tells you that MS supports their products. Any company whose line is "Format and reinstall" has no business calling a product "Server", let alone claiming they're in the enterprise level.
Schon, earlier in this thread, said "Rebooting doesn't solve the problem!!" I wonder what he'd say about formatting and reinstalling.
How could he be off-topic? He only replies to threads about his articles. He's, by definition, on-topic. His posts aren't really trolls either, that's the article.
He's long-winded, and rambles a bit, but he does answer questions and responds to comments about his articles.
I tend not to read his articles, but I wish all the editors who posted articles would actually read the discussion afterwords.
If they had, they'd have missed a lot of functionality that needed links into the rendering engine to properly work. Now, Gecko, the main engine, is so flexible it can do anything Mozilla throws at it, as well as just about anything else anyone would want in a browser.
Is Mozilla too big? Ok, grab Galleon, which comes with a full-featured Gecko rendering engine, thanks to the over-large Mozilla.
Maybe you don't agree with the specific subset of features that Mozilla had, but because they have a ton, it'll be easier for specialty browsers in the future to have the exact set of features that you want.
Or, if you want an embeddable HTML rendering engine for anything.. Want to do nicely formatted manuals for your application in a platform independent way? Use Gecko to render them, it runs (and produces consistent output) on more platforms than your program will...
The Apple 1 was a fully-supported product, not a prototype or anything, and they sold 500, not 50. It's still a tiny run compared to anything modern, but it was big enough that a few people in most large cities had one, enabling users groups and such.
And people wonder why Linux users buy less software than Windows users... If mtr was a standard program on all Windows (even server-level only) boxes, people wouldn't have to buy a shareware program to do the same thing..
And what admin in the middle of a huge crash cares about the pretty path the packets take? They want to know which router is down, but they don't care about its ICBM address (unless the problem is really bad.)
* The other reason Linux users don't buy software is that 1) many Linux boxes don't have users, 2) many Linux users are in 'poor' countries where the purchase price of MS Office would be a year's wages, or 3) is it worth paying $30 for a shareware program when the free one is just as good and maybe just not quite as pretty?
I buy windows software but not Linux, not because I don't think Linux developers need money, but because I haven't found a Linux program that I'd want to buy (and had to buy).
Now, if Q3 for Linux came out as soon as for Win32, I'd have bought that, but I'm not waiting a few weeks for a political statement.
Incriminating evidence of ANY crime, however small.
They get a 'tip' that you've got drugs, they bust the door down, find that a friend of yours has a joint in his wallet, or that you've got a war3z copy of a program, and boom, you're arrested. If there were drugs involved, they can seize your house and everything in it.
Your constitutional rights don't exist anymore. The courts don't give a shit and the cops are crooked. The only rights you have are the ones you can buy, hope you can bribe a judge - but without any money from your house (seized), or any other assets (frozen).
Lip service is payed to the laws, but when the chips are down, who do you think the laws protect? You, or the people who write the laws and buy the judges?
Don't you know that the police departments in the USA get to keep the proceeds from drug auctions. If they arrest enough "dealers" and auction their houses and cars (often without needing to waste time with a trial) they pour the funds into their departments. And you think their superiors don't reward that kind of thing?
It's a *SLIGHT* conflict of interest.
But, never mind, you'll call the ACLU and they'll fight the righteous fight, some judge who's a strict constitutionalist will set you free and slap the cops silly for their violations of your rights. It's a possibility. Do you play the lottery?
The "six degrees of freedom" refers to the ability to move in XYZ, and rotate in those axis as well. To move along an axis is one degree of freedom, the rotate around it is another. It's not called "six DIMENSIONS of freedom" but instead "six DEGREES of freedom". Nobody is implying that there are six dimensions, but six degrees of movement freedom. It's an old flight-simulator term.
Quake lacks some of these degrees of freedom in rendering in that the character can't tip their head to the side. For movement, you can't tip forward/back or right/left.
It may not often be appropriate to do so, but there is a difference as compared to a game like Descent where you can point the ship in any direction.
As to the issue of the character moving, or the map moving... It's a common rendering trick to move the map around a zero point. It simplifies a lot of the calculations. Many modern engines do this. In fact, this is just a minor detail that these days is wrapped up in OpenGL or DirectX, it's about as unimportant as the specific graphics format used to store the textures.
You are correct that Doom wouldn't do floor-over-floor. In fact, in wouldn't let the player and a monster intersect. You couldn't jump off a cliff if there was a monster right underneath.
This however doesn't mean anything about the 2d or 3d-ness of the rendering. Technically, any engine for which you have to specify a 3rd dimension in the rendering is a 3d engine. If Wolf3D it had a 3d appearance, yet all the ceilings were the same height, etc.
In Doom, there was definately a height stored for each sector, the floor and ceiling could and did change, small passages, huge rooms, etc.
It was a 3d engine, but it was a 3d engine with a lot of limitations.
The name "2.5D" was used to describe these engines (Doom, Duke3d, etc) but it's not a technical term. It basically means that the engine has some sort of limitation, such as 2D maps, or no floor-over-floor, or walls at 90-degree angles, etc. It's not a technical term though, there are no 2.5D engines, 3D engines which are described that way to illustrate the limitations.
The basic legal code is fairly understandable. Sure.
Now, toss things like the DMCA and the UCITA on there. They invalidate a whole raft of preexisting law, but only maybe, if they get upheld. And parts may be upheld and other not, etc.
It's legal to excerpt part of a book, and using a photocopier to do so is legal. Now, a book is the same, legally, as a DVD, but using a program to excerpt part of a DVD is illegal...
Or contract law. Contracts require the seven Cs, or however it's taught these days. Compotence, Consideration, etc, etc. Basically, both parties have to intend to enter into a contract, know the details of the contract, and get something from it. If your state support shrinkwrap licenses, that's all out the window.
I stand by my statement that the law is unknowable, to a professional, let alone a layman. Worse than that, it's contradictory. If you learn one piece, another may completely contradict it. And even if you could know it all, would a judge interpret it differently?
And the law IS more complex than it needs to be. Every time a hot-button issue comes up, a law is passed to calm the people. (I know that's a generalization) Many things are illegal for multiple reasons and laws are still passed against them. The example I'm familiar with - Canadian gun laws... Fully-automatic anything is illegal, there are also laws banning specific fully-automatic weapons. That's redundant.
Then there's all the obsolete stuff you'll find in joke lists, such as it being illegal for a mule to sleep in a bathtub, or to notify the police before driving into a town, so they could calm the horses...
Laws like that are usually left on the books, because removing them is too much trouble, it's just generally accepted that nobody will enforce them. Do you want to be the person to test that? Do something 'immoral' in a small town and see if you get arrested under an unrelated charge that technically everyone is guilty of. (This happened a lot in the 60s, with the hippies and/or de-segregationists.) It's a bit off-topic, but it does illustrate a problem with a complex and partially obsolete criminal code.
The law *is* more complex than it needs to be. If nothing else, whenever two laws intersect, someone should investigate them to see if they could be merged into one law that better covers the intent of the drafters. Similarly, we should automatically review any law after a set period of time, to see if it's still relevant (with the default being 'No').
There is no perfect solution, but we sure could go about cleaning up the one we use.
Slashdot Mirror
He didn't actually draft the law, or the final law, but he worked with the department that lobbied for what eventually became the DMCA.
And yeah, it basically would be high-treason. By destroying the public's trust in the judicial system, the country is significantly weakened.
It's like when people start questioning if their vote actually matters, when vote tampering could have won a close election.
I wouldn't actually recommend the death penalty for it, just life in jail. To me, it seems fair for a traitor who sells out their country for some money.
No problem, I've had discussions with you before so I know you're not just a grammar nazi or anything. Not *just* at any rate. :)
I think fines need to be based on the damage done, and partly on the ability to pay.
There was a pollution case I was reading about where the company dumped semi-toxic waste because paying the fine was cheaper than paying for proper disposal.
That's insane, even my city is smart enough to make the cost of a crime more expensive than compliance with the law. (Driving with a non-hands free cellphone is fined at $150, because that was twice the cost of a hands-free kit when the law was passed.)
I think punishments also need to be scaled to someone's ability to pay. A rich person and a poor person both live the same lifespan (aproximately) and a year in jail hurts both the same way. But a $10k fine might be a year's savings to the poor person, but to the rich person it's a month's worth.
IMHO we should base these things on someone's wealth. A $10k fine for a person making $30k a year becomes a $1.5M fine for a person making $4.5M a year. (Basically, though it should take total assets into account, etc)
I do realize it'd be very hard to properly implement, but nobody ever said law was easy. It might take a ton of investigation to do properly, ditto with the fine based on the ill-gotten gains, but it'd start to make crime an unattractive proposition.
While I feel, on a personal level, for your loss of money, and I understand how that hurts the retirement date... I don't think you should do anything unethical to make more money, or by supporting the wrong people, do anything unethical by proxy.
Now, you did nothing directly to aid MS, but your purchase of their stock, along with many other people, is what drove the price up. People were willing to pay it. Had you not been, and others like you, not been, the price would have been low.
A high stock price *is* in MS's favour, and on a personal level, helps the officers of the company because of their stock options.
I see many people who are fully aware of MS's crimes, and yet don't want them to be punished simply because they own stock. It's like voting for bread and circuses... It's eating away at the stability of society just so you get a slightly larger cut than anyone else.
Because of this, it makes me question the immunity of stockholders. I would consider making it a crime for people to invest in a company they know is breaking the law.
It might have a "chilling effect" on the markets, but the world would continue. People would still want their products, so companies would still make them. Their investors would just demand a lot more oversight so that they could prove they didn't know about any crimes the company had committed.
Oh, and I'd also have tossed Bill in jail for a year for perjury when he lied and had those falsified videos shown.
The long and short of it is that you decided that having more money was worth the ethical cost of supporting someone like BillG. I disagree.
Nope.
I can't point to anything to prove it, but they've done this in many ways. They tweaked Windows 3.x to not run on DR-DOS (Thanks Ethereal for the nitpick).
They broke Lotus Notes in NT4 SP6.
They added delay loops in MS Office for the Mac to prove that Windows was a better OS (See, it runs Office faster).
The deliberate changes to sabotage a competitor are fairly common knowledge. Check google.
This would be a good idea, if it worked. However executives rarely get punished for their actions and ditto with companies.
Rambus drove their stock very high by illegally pursuing fraudulent patents. I don't see their officers being led off to prison, nor anyone in the business world saying that it's a likely outcome. Why not?
Ditto with MS. If you or I lied to a judge and deliberately fabricated evidence, we'd be behind bars immediately for at least six months. Why didn't Gates even get slapped for it? Or the people who, on his orders, knowingly faked a video 'proving' something.
Toss them in jail, and fine both companies HUGE ammounts (based on their take from the illegal actions, AND on reparations for the companies they've hurt.)
Until this kind of action is common, chances are that anyone who buys stock in a company like MS is endorsing their behaviour. If you do enough research to justify a stock purchase, their illegal activities are fairly obvious.
Ok, so the period was an accident.
Try to make a point relevant to my post while you pick on how I wrote it.
Sort of an ObRelevant, for the alt.hackers out there.
The good thing about this being sent back is that when it goes through again, there won't be anything worthy of appeal.
I hope MS doesn't get broken up, I agree. I hope they get fines based on the percentage of their business that they unfairly stole from other companies. Simple 100% of the revenue from all the business they wouldn't have had, if they'd not forced competitors out of business with the monopolistic trade practices.
I have little sympathy though, for people who invest in mutual funds without investigating them. I won't invest in a fund which has stock in companies who I wouldn't invest in directly, and I wouldn't invest in companies whose business practices I don't condone. (Think Rambus and Microsoft, etc)
This country (and the world, though less) is getting too willing to say "Oh, I didn't know, it's not my fault." when they should have looked. If it takes a bunch of people losing their shirts over this, so be it. I'm sure they could make most of that back with a class-action lawsuit against the mutal fund, for investing in MS when this case was proceeding. It's the American way after-all. Don't accept responsibility, sue everyone who didn't protect you.
Nothing personal, but I hope you lose a lot of money on those stocks.
Why? Because by buying them you're actively supporting a company that's guilty (and proved it, by lying in court) of many crimes.
And now you're complaining that they may be reprimanded for this and you may not get the full benefit of those criminal actions.
Oh, wah. My heart really bleeds for you.
"Just stop using their products"
Wow, if only it were that easy. You know, they're trying to make you purchase their OS with any computer, regardless of your planned use. And they'll succeed, because they can buy enough legislators, and rely on the stupid ones not know that you can indeed use a computer without windows.
They're also using monopolistic practices to put other companies out of business, depriving people of choice.
Stomping MS into the ground wouldn't be socialism, it'd be a capitalism held in control by the people, at the expense of one tyranical rich guy and a bunch of greedy share-holders who are willing to overlook outright crime in order to make a buck.
Microsoft is purchasing enough legislators to force people to use their software.
Their suprise software audits are performed with federal marshalls, without MS having to provide proof of wrong-doing. Isn't it a bit scary that a company can buy federal cops to enforce their EULAs?
They're trying to get the government to forbid the GPL and similar open-source licensing agreements. Both so that no government agency (or agency working for the government) can use GPLed software, or release any software under the GPL.
They're also well on the way to switching to a subscription model for software. You can't buy it once and use it, you keep paying.
Combine this with their stance that any computer sold without an OS is one that will be used to pirate an MS product, and you get a situation where you'll be paying a government mandated MS tax on any system you buy, regardless of what you do with it.
There's a lot more they're doing, but it generally involves steps towards having the government mandate that everyone simply owes MS an annual tax, because, after all, the only software is MS's, and if you're not paying for it, you're a criminal.
You (if you are from the US) live in as much of a socialist country as it is a capitalist one.
The government passes many laws controlling businesses, taxes both companies and people, and applies that to improvements for the benefit of the people. That's a socialism.
It's nominally capitalist, but only within fairly strict guidelines.
The only problem is that our government is in the pay of the corporations and they pass laws that help the biggest. Which just shows that it's a corrupt socialism, not that it's not socialist.
New things can't be used to find them guilty, that's based only on evidence already entered. (In fact, the decision still stands.)
But new evidence can be considered with regards to the actions to take.
Much like a judge considers if a defendant seems remourseful, or arrogant and likely to re-offend.
This doesn't explain the judge in the 2600 case. He worked for Turner Broadcasting, relating to DVD protection. And TB is a large part of the MPAA.
So that's not bias? And yet he refused to excuse himself from the case, with barely any explanation.
I've hard of judges excusing themselves from cases for such distant relations as their uncle playing golf with a cousin of one of the participants in the trial. In fact, in the inbred political circles in some areas, that's a major problem, finding a judge who can hear a case because they don't have any third-degree relations with anyone involved.
Yet, in this case, the judge was specifically payed to help draft a law, then he's called on by his old bosses to help in enforcing that law. And that's not bias?
That should be treason. I think actions like that should get him removed from the bench and bisbarred.
Sure there is. Just no flat fee that will affect them.
Let's take the Dr. Dos case as an example. Let's say that they increased their immediate market share by 5% by converting DrDos users. Then, they prevented more from switching by continuing this sort of thing. Figure out from similar markets, how much of their user base they gained only by unfairly eliminating the competition.
So, fine them n% of their earnings from their OS.
Then do the same with Office, etc. See how many people use Office because MS tweaked the OS to hurt competitors. Then see how many people use Office because Microsoft removed OS competitors (and thus the office suites that ran on those other OSes).
Fine Microsoft n% of their office-suit sales.
Etc.
It wouldn't kill them, but a fine based on their ill-gotten gains would be a great punishment. It'd not only hurt them, but it'd be a great incentive for other companies to play fair.
It'd also be a HUGE slap to all the assholes who own MS stock and support them, not because they're right, but simply because it's the best thing for their stock portfolio. I'd *LOVE* to remove immunity, for people who knowingly invest in a company involved in illegal actions.
(Man, just consider the Rambus investors, especially the ones who invested a year ago, when they announced their plans and it was public knowledge how they got their patents... those people deserve a bit of jail time along with the officers of the company, the lawyers advising them, and the employees putting this into effect.)
Well, that's what it is. If you follow the law and someone else doesn't, they've got the advantage. So you take them to court... They punish them for their law-breaking, AND make them follow the same rules as anyone else.
Everyone loses if this crooked company wins, because nobody will be able to beat them without being crooked, and they'll end up with a monopoly and be ruthless about enforcing it.
Much like a big software company we're all familiar with.
Theft of Service requires reducing the capacity of the service provider to provide that service.
Psychologists can say what they will, but it's obvious to anyone with a clue than only an idiot would take their morality from law. It's supposed to go the other way, public morality defines law.
Enjoy your stilted little life. I'm sure you'll follow all the UCITA rules... Make sure to never sell a copy of Windows, MS says you don't really own it. And never fast-forward through commercials on a DVD, even if you have one of the players which doesn't enforce that. After all, having that player is almost as good as stealing from the MPAA...
I've never understood how people like you could reconcile something being legal, and thus moral, for a period of time. Then, as soon as a law is passed against it, it suddenly becomes immoral. How exactly does that work? When the MPAA buys a few legislators, does that define universal morality?
The problem with your argument is that people who've actually looked up the meaning of Theft and Stealing know that the words do not mean what you think they do...
... morally wrong. They may be unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work, that'd make them ... unauthorized copies.
Theft is when you unlawfully deprive the owner of property.
In both of your cases, the company involved wasn't deprived of any property.
So it's not theft.
Now, hear me out. I'm not going to make a moral statement here (You can read my other posts if you wish to know my stance.) I'm merely correcting your use of the word.
These things may (or may not be, to you) morally wrong. That would make them
Nothing more, nothing less.
http://www.bmug.org/news/articles/MSvsPF.html
.....'" We do, and then we reboot. Problem solved.
I beg to differ.
That article details calling the 900 line, but even with support contracts, most MS tech support reps toe the company line in a distressing fashion.
"Unplug all the unix servers, that'll fix it"
"Upgrade everything to Win2k Adv Serv, that'll fix it"
"Upgrade to SQL Server (from Oracle), that'll fix it."
They seem to have no ability to distinguish which network components could be involved in a problem and are unwilling to accept that you've already localized the problem.
Case in point, there was a problem where two WinNT boxes wouldn't see each other. They both had IPs, they could both ping everything else. They were connected via a 100mbps switch.
We made sure each properly had an IP, that it could reach other machines, that the switch worked, and then swapped ports with two machines that were working just fine. We also tried isolating these two machines on their own switch, to avoid potential IP conflicts.
When we called the support number we honestly described the situation to the tech. He asked what else was on the network. We explained that it was in a different IP range, but on the same switches as a bunch of Linux machines, an Open BSD (firewall for the desktop machines), and a couple Suns (doing something for the other department, dunno what.)
He then proceeded to tell us that it was the other computers, despite our telling him that we had isolated the NT boxes in question on their own switch and we still had the problem, but when we put a third computer on, both of the NT boxes could reach it just fine.
We eventually lied to him, telling him that yes, we had unplugged all the unix machines, etc. (Like we're going to just unplug out company on the say-so of a moron, and like two junior techs would have the authority to do so anyway.) So now jim-bob starts to help, by telling us that Win2k is so much better, etc, that we wouldn't have these problems with it, etc.
When we flat-out refuse to "upgrade" to fix this bug, his advice is that we format the drives and reinstall. ARGH!
We finally convince him that these machines are somewhat important and we can't just wipe them everytime there's a small problem.
After over an hour with this jack-off, we hang-up, problem unresolved.
We get permission from the boss to call someone in... So we look through our list of contacts and grab someone whose card says they deal with networking and windows. Call him up. As we're describing the problem he listens quietly, grunts affirmatively when we describe how we isolated the problem, agrees that it couldn't be any of the other machines.
Then he says, "It sounds like it's an issue with a bad route, type 'route
He said that it, whatever it was, was a very common problem where the machines basically forget how to get from A to B. That command zeroed the routing (which didn't show any bad routes) and the reboot brought it back up.
Cost, a 15-minute phone consultation. $45
Microsoft tech support was basically a sales department, staffed with the marketing rejects.
So, don't EVER believe it if someone tells you that MS supports their products. Any company whose line is "Format and reinstall" has no business calling a product "Server", let alone claiming they're in the enterprise level.
Schon, earlier in this thread, said "Rebooting doesn't solve the problem!!" I wonder what he'd say about formatting and reinstalling.
How could he be off-topic? He only replies to threads about his articles. He's, by definition, on-topic. His posts aren't really trolls either, that's the article.
He's long-winded, and rambles a bit, but he does answer questions and responds to comments about his articles.
I tend not to read his articles, but I wish all the editors who posted articles would actually read the discussion afterwords.
If they had, they'd have missed a lot of functionality that needed links into the rendering engine to properly work. Now, Gecko, the main engine, is so flexible it can do anything Mozilla throws at it, as well as just about anything else anyone would want in a browser.
Is Mozilla too big? Ok, grab Galleon, which comes with a full-featured Gecko rendering engine, thanks to the over-large Mozilla.
Maybe you don't agree with the specific subset of features that Mozilla had, but because they have a ton, it'll be easier for specialty browsers in the future to have the exact set of features that you want.
Or, if you want an embeddable HTML rendering engine for anything.. Want to do nicely formatted manuals for your application in a platform independent way? Use Gecko to render them, it runs (and produces consistent output) on more platforms than your program will...
The Apple 1 was a fully-supported product, not a prototype or anything, and they sold 500, not 50. It's still a tiny run compared to anything modern, but it was big enough that a few people in most large cities had one, enabling users groups and such.
http://applefritter.com/apple1/
Funny, isn't it?
And people wonder why Linux users buy less software than Windows users... If mtr was a standard program on all Windows (even server-level only) boxes, people wouldn't have to buy a shareware program to do the same thing..
And what admin in the middle of a huge crash cares about the pretty path the packets take? They want to know which router is down, but they don't care about its ICBM address (unless the problem is really bad.)
* The other reason Linux users don't buy software is that 1) many Linux boxes don't have users, 2) many Linux users are in 'poor' countries where the purchase price of MS Office would be a year's wages, or 3) is it worth paying $30 for a shareware program when the free one is just as good and maybe just not quite as pretty?
I buy windows software but not Linux, not because I don't think Linux developers need money, but because I haven't found a Linux program that I'd want to buy (and had to buy).
Now, if Q3 for Linux came out as soon as for Win32, I'd have bought that, but I'm not waiting a few weeks for a political statement.
Incriminating evidence of ANY crime, however small.
They get a 'tip' that you've got drugs, they bust the door down, find that a friend of yours has a joint in his wallet, or that you've got a war3z copy of a program, and boom, you're arrested. If there were drugs involved, they can seize your house and everything in it.
Your constitutional rights don't exist anymore. The courts don't give a shit and the cops are crooked. The only rights you have are the ones you can buy, hope you can bribe a judge - but without any money from your house (seized), or any other assets (frozen).
Lip service is payed to the laws, but when the chips are down, who do you think the laws protect? You, or the people who write the laws and buy the judges?
Don't you know that the police departments in the USA get to keep the proceeds from drug auctions. If they arrest enough "dealers" and auction their houses and cars (often without needing to waste time with a trial) they pour the funds into their departments. And you think their superiors don't reward that kind of thing?
It's a *SLIGHT* conflict of interest.
But, never mind, you'll call the ACLU and they'll fight the righteous fight, some judge who's a strict constitutionalist will set you free and slap the cops silly for their violations of your rights. It's a possibility. Do you play the lottery?
The "six degrees of freedom" refers to the ability to move in XYZ, and rotate in those axis as well. To move along an axis is one degree of freedom, the rotate around it is another. It's not called "six DIMENSIONS of freedom" but instead "six DEGREES of freedom". Nobody is implying that there are six dimensions, but six degrees of movement freedom. It's an old flight-simulator term.
Quake lacks some of these degrees of freedom in rendering in that the character can't tip their head to the side. For movement, you can't tip forward/back or right/left.
It may not often be appropriate to do so, but there is a difference as compared to a game like Descent where you can point the ship in any direction.
As to the issue of the character moving, or the map moving... It's a common rendering trick to move the map around a zero point. It simplifies a lot of the calculations. Many modern engines do this. In fact, this is just a minor detail that these days is wrapped up in OpenGL or DirectX, it's about as unimportant as the specific graphics format used to store the textures.
You are correct that Doom wouldn't do floor-over-floor. In fact, in wouldn't let the player and a monster intersect. You couldn't jump off a cliff if there was a monster right underneath.
This however doesn't mean anything about the 2d or 3d-ness of the rendering. Technically, any engine for which you have to specify a 3rd dimension in the rendering is a 3d engine. If Wolf3D it had a 3d appearance, yet all the ceilings were the same height, etc.
In Doom, there was definately a height stored for each sector, the floor and ceiling could and did change, small passages, huge rooms, etc.
It was a 3d engine, but it was a 3d engine with a lot of limitations.
The name "2.5D" was used to describe these engines (Doom, Duke3d, etc) but it's not a technical term. It basically means that the engine has some sort of limitation, such as 2D maps, or no floor-over-floor, or walls at 90-degree angles, etc. It's not a technical term though, there are no 2.5D engines, 3D engines which are described that way to illustrate the limitations.
The basic legal code is fairly understandable. Sure.
Now, toss things like the DMCA and the UCITA on there. They invalidate a whole raft of preexisting law, but only maybe, if they get upheld. And parts may be upheld and other not, etc.
It's legal to excerpt part of a book, and using a photocopier to do so is legal. Now, a book is the same, legally, as a DVD, but using a program to excerpt part of a DVD is illegal...
Or contract law. Contracts require the seven Cs, or however it's taught these days. Compotence, Consideration, etc, etc. Basically, both parties have to intend to enter into a contract, know the details of the contract, and get something from it. If your state support shrinkwrap licenses, that's all out the window.
I stand by my statement that the law is unknowable, to a professional, let alone a layman. Worse than that, it's contradictory. If you learn one piece, another may completely contradict it. And even if you could know it all, would a judge interpret it differently?
And the law IS more complex than it needs to be. Every time a hot-button issue comes up, a law is passed to calm the people. (I know that's a generalization) Many things are illegal for multiple reasons and laws are still passed against them. The example I'm familiar with - Canadian gun laws... Fully-automatic anything is illegal, there are also laws banning specific fully-automatic weapons. That's redundant.
Then there's all the obsolete stuff you'll find in joke lists, such as it being illegal for a mule to sleep in a bathtub, or to notify the police before driving into a town, so they could calm the horses...
Laws like that are usually left on the books, because removing them is too much trouble, it's just generally accepted that nobody will enforce them. Do you want to be the person to test that? Do something 'immoral' in a small town and see if you get arrested under an unrelated charge that technically everyone is guilty of. (This happened a lot in the 60s, with the hippies and/or de-segregationists.) It's a bit off-topic, but it does illustrate a problem with a complex and partially obsolete criminal code.
The law *is* more complex than it needs to be. If nothing else, whenever two laws intersect, someone should investigate them to see if they could be merged into one law that better covers the intent of the drafters. Similarly, we should automatically review any law after a set period of time, to see if it's still relevant (with the default being 'No').
There is no perfect solution, but we sure could go about cleaning up the one we use.