There's a pluggin (that you have to have to view images on terraserver - an online database of sat. pics of earth) that (is only available for Windows) disables print-screen functionality by hooking that system call and removing the image from protected parts of the screen. So if you print-screen it displays 'Copyrighted Image' in the area the picture occupied, in the final image.
Sucks.
Luckily, any system call they can hook, other people can as well...
Quick correction... Carmack didn't write the game logic for anything in the Quake series. He might have done part of it for Q1, but Q2 and Q3 other people were doing it.
Not to say he couldn't, the game logic is the easiest stuff in those games, but just to give credit where credit is due...
And you're right, Carmack didn't *invent* any of the 3D graphics tools, he "invented" ways to do them fast enough on machines of the day, to use them in realtime.
And sure, Michael Abrash helped with some of it, but it was Carmack who put in the very long days, trying all the different ways he could think of, actually testing various methods.
Yawn. MGS is a dull game, on a dull platform. Consoles are suited for racing games and fighting games, period. The lack of any real way to save your game means that console games can't really differentiate characters and can't save any progress in a usefull way.
MGS was a neat concept, but was poorly executed compared to what could be done on a PC with a decent engine.
Calling the designer a genius is only slightly less ridiculous than calling the designer of Zelda 64 a genius. They're both stuck in a console world making cheap throw-away games.
Well, you could encrypt the CCs on one machine and just pass the encrypted string to the DB server... There's no reason why the DB server needs to know what the real CC # is, it just needs to keep it with the order info long enough to do all the proper processing.
And, not as a reply directly to you...
CC.com didn't need to keep the credit cards, they only do verification, the merchant can send a new transaction each time they need (to check during ordering, and to charge at shipping). This way there isn't one big master DB with all the numbers, CC.com would hang onto the #s only long enough to process the order. The CC never needs to get stored on a HD at any point, if CC.com crashes and they lose the numbers they're processing, the merchant just resends the transaction after the timeout.
The means you have to trust your merchant, but I'd prefer this. It means smaller DBs (less temping for crackers) and a well defined chain of trust. If I shop at Amazon, I should only need to trust Amazon, not three or four back-end companies that I've never heard of.
That's the justification most companies would use, but it's completely out of touch with reality.
Corporations throw away millions of dollars just to get people to think of their products, this is called advertising. Nobody questions this...
So why is it impossible to understand that a company would give away something with absolutely no chance of making any money, to get people to think of their other products?
The goal of a company is to make money, but that doesn't mean that every single action must result in the company making money, merely that the whole series of actions a company take be designed to earn money. Advertising doesn't make money, advertising helps sell products. Giving old games away doesn't make money, new customers interested in your product like does.
So remove the restriction for anyone willing to come in and show you their ID in person.
The whole point is that the system be hard to abuse, by default. Stop spammers from being able to make ten fake accounts per day without leaving home.
Re:I'm 16. Does EULA legally bind on me?
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I don't think EULAs are binding, for many reasons, but your defense wouldn't work.
If you ask someone to do something for you, you're liable for their actions in doing so. If you ask me to steal you a car, you're guilty, though not of theft, instead it's conspiracy to commit, or some other 'supporting' crime.
We're free and clear with the Cue Cat scanners because they gave them away. They could give them away free with any labelling they wanted, people would still be completely within their legal rights to do whatever theyt wanted to the device.
If they want it to be binding they need to ask people to agree to the contract *before* they get the device, and they can't give them away unsolicited.
So, click whatever they insist you click to make it install.
They can't take away your right to use the software you purchased, so by putting in a contract you must 'agree' to in order to use that product renders the contract void.
To get around that they'd have to have 'I Agree', 'Cancel', and 'I Disagree, Install Anyway' buttons. Because they don't, you're free to install that software even if it means clicking 'I Agree'.
It doesn't really matter, the EULA is already unenforcable before that. The fact that the store knows there's an EULA and the software company does (obviously) simply goes to prove their intent - that the contract never be binding.
But once you buy a product (or a license to use, if you choose to see if their way) you *own* that product/license. There may be rights attached to it that you don't own (copyright, etc) but you have all rights necessary to use it in the manner for which is was advertised when you bought it.
If I sell you a software product you have the right to make the copies inherent in using it (on ram, the installed copy, etc) because you couldn't use it otherwise and I sold it to you as a working product...
Anyways, if you buy a product you have the right to use it. The EULA usually offers you the right to use the product for agreeing to the 'contract'. This isn't binding because you already own that right, they're offering you something of no value. Then, they're attempting to withhold your right to use the software because the 'I DISagree' button cancels the install. This is coercion, they're forcing you to do something in order to exercise your rights. It'd be like me threatening to take your car unless you bought my tires.
There are other problems with the EULA, but those are the main ones.
Just ignore them, unless they're in your best interest (like Windows Refund Day). They aren't binding on you, but they are binding on the company that issued them. (They can't have offered a contract they knew was invalid, can they?:)
Re:Obvious Question: Who read the EULA?
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· Score: 2
Sure, I read through all binding contracts before I sign them. But I don't read EULAs before I click through, they're meaningless corporate drivel that isn't enforcable.
EULAs violate many of the basic contract principles (they aren't voluntary because the company is withholding something you paid for until you sign an unrelated contract, they don't offer you anything because you already paid to use the software, etc.) The only way an EULA could be binding is with some UCITA-type law, and 'they' passed that precisely because 'they' knew that EULAs aren't at all enforceable.
Technically, an EULA just can't be forced upon you for the purchase of software you already bought. If you like the EULA you can take the company up on its offer (like you did) and it will be binding, because you're waiving some of your rights.
But you can click-through without fear, if the only way to get around the contract to use the product you legally purchased is by clicking 'I Agree' then that button has no more legal significance than 'Next'.
A company could make an EULA binding, IF they didn't make it mandatory, and offered something you didn't already own (an extended service contract perhaps). Or, in the case of shareware where you didn't buy the product before seeing the EULA.
But a hidden contract (in the box, can't be read till it's purchased and taken home) isn't binding.
You pay for a phone line, and your ISP pays for their phone lines. The telco gets paid for their job of local data transfer. The ISP buys their backbone from someone else.
I don't see how the telco pays anyone in this, but they do get paid by the people on both ends of the telephone call.
The only way the telco pays someone to carry the data farther is with long distance. If they don't carry it long distance, then they don't have to pay anyone else.
Anyways, as everyone else said, if the telco contracts to provide flat-rate local service, then they should provide flat-rate local service, it's a contract they entered into fairly.
If they can't handle it, well tough, maybe they go out of business. Someone will jump in and offer bandwidth (for voice or data) at a price that they can sustain. This is the case where a free market economy works.
My culture is a mishmash of other cultures, I have no set ancestral culture. I do what I want to do, based on the choices available. That is how I *know* that my culture is far superior to yours. Your culture (if it's the same as that of the people around you) is inferior because it isn't designed around you. Cultures serve to bring people together, by enforcing similarity. That's bad.
I want to be as individual as I want, then seek out other people who sought the same things independently.
Your culture can serve to make you another proverbial brick in the wall, you can live up to all the stereotypes and be just like everyone else.
I'm racially a mutt, but I tend to like Irish music, German food, British humor, Belgian chocolate:) None of that would be part of the 'culture' I'd have grown up with had my parents been strongly into the one set of ideas, but it serves to make me quite happy.
You can go hang out with your racial peers, I'll avoid you just like I avoid any other racist.
I think you misunderstood the original poster's rant...
He was saying that it's very arrogant to go to a country where you don't speak the language, and where you don't even try.
There was no judgement about which language is better. An English speaker is rude if they travel and expect people to cater to their language, a spanish/japanese/french speaker is rude if they travel and expect people to cater to them (outside of tourist traps) in their native language.
Further, imho, it is very destructive to the idea of a community to continue speaking your native language in public (building little mini-communities) and not teaching your children the local language. The natives of the area will never really warm to someone they can't talk to and you'll find yourself getting treated badly just because nobody can talk to you.
I do agree with the previous poster about immigration. With the possible exception of refugees (who I think should be trained in the native language as soon as possible) I'd turn away everyone who wasn't fairly fluent in the native language. If you bring someone into a country where they don't speak the language they're either stuck in the home, or dealing with a local minority culture. In either case they're not helping the locals at all and really aren't wanted.
Yes it would but let's be realistic. The fact is that there is a very strong interdependence between language and culture. An universal language would need an universal culture, that's impossible. We would have to live in the same latitude, grow up eating the same things, watching the same landscapes, thinking, discussing, joking in the same fashion, everything, everywhere would be homogeneous. Is that your notion of an ideal world?
I disagree with the idea that a culture and a language must be connected. I work with a guy who barely speaks English, yet he completely embraces local culture to the exclusion of his ancestral culture. And I know people who speak English on opposite sides of the Earth who are from completely different cultures.
I know a Canadian trapper who only rarely comes close enough to town to see other people, a few high-class socialites, a Malaysian girl, an Austrian family, a Tanzanian couple, and many others in my home town (Vancouver BC) who are so different as to be part of a completely different culture.
There's much more of a language barrier between me and a Scottish friend of mine who grew up in many ways similar to me and has an identical culture, than between me and most of the others, despite the fact that their lives are vastly different than mine.
I think it would be a good idea if everyone spoke the same language, and I think that technology makes that inevitable. Many parents I know don't bother teaching their children their ancestral language because they can get by just as well without it. Think what it'll be like in the future where everywhere is wired, but to access the majority of the services you'll have to speak/read English... (Not that you said anything about probability, just desirability.)
On the 'darwinian' angle, many cultural traits are useless. I don't care if my ancestors (a hard group to nail down, I'm a mix of six 'races' in the last two generation.) did some silly thing. It may be neat from a historical lesson to learn the reasons behind eating turkey for Thanksgiving, but I'd prefer to have a ham. And I feel similarly about more 'important' things too, if they're relevant to me now, they will be part of my culture. If they aren't, I don't really care.
It's been a while since I've read the book, but I think there was a period of time where he was flying, if only sitting in the seat while the auto-pilot did the flying, so that the real pilot could piss, or sleep, or something.
That and the bit with him playing doctor, where they left him in charge one night, as the senior doctor, was kinda scary.
It doesn't say anything about circumventing copyright, just circumventing access controls. It doesn't matter if you intend the device to be legally used on your own materials, it still circumvents an access control mechanism.
in (b) in says "... limited commercially significant purpose... "
If you create this device to access your own works it will have no commercial use, let alone outside of circumventing access controls.
This is why DeCSS would have been squashed under any circumstances. It has no commercial purpose, the players that will use it are free. It also has no other use, it exists to view DVDs, like a DVD player abvously does.
The law is (imho) an obvious attempt to squash any form of competition against the (mon/duo)poly situation where a limited cartel of companies produce the movies and the mechanism to view them.
Try _The Fire Upon the Deep_ by Vernor Vinge. It's about a galaxy full of beings, some on their first climb up from animals, some from fallen civilizations, some that have transcended physical being and are in many ways gods... Yet none of them are 'good' or 'bad'.
Besides, it's fun to read a book where one of the main characters majored in 'applied theology'.:)
I like the view of a galaxy full of critters, it seems more realistic to me that we'd be in the middle, fairly good at stuff, but not the brightest, or the strongest, or anything. We didn't evolve in a way that required any one thing above all else, so I doubt we'd be better than a specialized creature.
So because one company (or person) does something, everyone should?
I'm not saying that everything *is* roses. I'm just saying that anyone who does something despicable is despicable, despite their excuse that everyone else is doing it.
I refuse to support a despicable action. I may have to support a company that has been despicable, but I won't support one of those decisions directly.
Yeah, it's tough to play by the rules. That would be a good excuse for me to cheat on my taxes, steal whenever I could, sabotage any competition, etc. I mean, it's tough out there, so why should I be expected to follow all the rules?
I do expect that mistakes will happen, what I don't accept is when companies intentionally break the law because they can tie the case up for years if anyone sues them, or when a company uses strong-arm tactics against those who are unable to fight back.
FYI: Nobody compared Intel to the Mafia, the comparison was between their actions.
If Intel does whatever 'need to be done' to dominate, by any barely legal means, does that really seem like an unfair comparison? People seem to cut companies *way* too much slack when they're trying to make money. I think it's some little Ayn Rand thing, but it's insane. Nobody cuts a thief any slack when he breaks into your home and steals something, even if he's doing it for a profit. How is it different when a company with an army of lawyers traps you in some barely (if at all) legal trap of theirs and threatens to break you through legal fees? It's basically a protection racket.
I'm all for people trying to make a profit, when they follow the same rules everyone else has to follow.
Yes, actually I *do* think the RAMBUS fiasco was intentional... Well, the first part of it anyways.
They [Intel] wanted to get more control over the industry. They do this by developing a technology and then licensing its use (witness MMX, SSE, etc). They knew that PCs needed more memory bandwidth, and they sought a solution, that much is reasonable. But then they ended up choosing a solution that would lead everyone to buying a new type of ram, which their strategic partner (who Intel owns a bit of) held the patents on...
They tried to force everyone to use a new technology because they got kickbacks from the sales of that technology, not because it was better. They did they by linking their product (CPUs and chipsets) to those of another company (RAMBUS's RDRAM). In many markets this is illegal, it'd be like GM putting a special tire-detection chip on their cars which wouldn't let the car work without GM-approved tires (which would of course cost three times as much.)
This little scheme backfired because AMD and VIA were here to give consumers enough choice.
So, Intel didn't choose to be screwed over in the RAMBUS deal but they deserve it because they intended to screw customers over, locking everyone into a patent-enforced monopoly.
Maybe all companies would do this... maybe AMD will try. But I'll be against any company who does, no need to reward that sort of behavior.
It's not actually a copyright violation. It might be a contract violation if they agreed to something when they made an account, but it still wouldn't be a copyright violation.
Copyright *can* cover pulling addresses from lists and all, but only when the organization shows creative intent. An alphabetical list of phone numbers, no. A street-by-street listing of number, maybe. But in any case, to use that information isn't a copyright violation, only reproducing it would be.
So why not limit new accounts to 50 pieces of email per day until the account is a few months old?
And run a few simple filters on the mail to check if it's all got the same body text, or similar addresses, or something, flag it for a human to look at.
Or, just keep all accounts from sending more than 50 pieces per day unless the user has specifically requested a higher limit - then watch the people who do for a while to make sure it's not spam.
This doesn't even entail reading the email, unless it all comes up as identical... just looking at addresses and sending patterns.
Blocking access to external mail servers would be a good idea too, at least until people ask for that to be changed on their account.
That way, anonymous spammers wouldn't be able to create and abuse tons of accounts but regular users would, at worst, have to email the support staff to get the email limit and such removed.
I agree, it's called representative democracy but when they don't actually have to represent you it sounds a bit hollow...
I've often thought that the party system should be outlawed - they promise to represent you but then they get into power and vote for the party line, something opposite of what their constituents want.
There was a case of it in BC 5-8 years ago (I don't remember) where someone polled most of a district and found that 85% of people who responded wanted one thing - their MP still voted the other way.
I think they should be sued, for breach of contract maybe, treason at the outside... (it's basically subversion of the system.)
Slashdot Mirror
There's a pluggin (that you have to have to view images on terraserver - an online database of sat. pics of earth) that (is only available for Windows) disables print-screen functionality by hooking that system call and removing the image from protected parts of the screen. So if you print-screen it displays 'Copyrighted Image' in the area the picture occupied, in the final image.
Sucks.
Luckily, any system call they can hook, other people can as well...
Quick correction... Carmack didn't write the game logic for anything in the Quake series. He might have done part of it for Q1, but Q2 and Q3 other people were doing it.
Not to say he couldn't, the game logic is the easiest stuff in those games, but just to give credit where credit is due...
And you're right, Carmack didn't *invent* any of the 3D graphics tools, he "invented" ways to do them fast enough on machines of the day, to use them in realtime.
And sure, Michael Abrash helped with some of it, but it was Carmack who put in the very long days, trying all the different ways he could think of, actually testing various methods.
Yawn. MGS is a dull game, on a dull platform. Consoles are suited for racing games and fighting games, period. The lack of any real way to save your game means that console games can't really differentiate characters and can't save any progress in a usefull way.
MGS was a neat concept, but was poorly executed compared to what could be done on a PC with a decent engine.
Calling the designer a genius is only slightly less ridiculous than calling the designer of Zelda 64 a genius. They're both stuck in a console world making cheap throw-away games.
Well, you could encrypt the CCs on one machine and just pass the encrypted string to the DB server... There's no reason why the DB server needs to know what the real CC # is, it just needs to keep it with the order info long enough to do all the proper processing.
And, not as a reply directly to you...
CC.com didn't need to keep the credit cards, they only do verification, the merchant can send a new transaction each time they need (to check during ordering, and to charge at shipping). This way there isn't one big master DB with all the numbers, CC.com would hang onto the #s only long enough to process the order. The CC never needs to get stored on a HD at any point, if CC.com crashes and they lose the numbers they're processing, the merchant just resends the transaction after the timeout.
The means you have to trust your merchant, but I'd prefer this. It means smaller DBs (less temping for crackers) and a well defined chain of trust. If I shop at Amazon, I should only need to trust Amazon, not three or four back-end companies that I've never heard of.
That's the justification most companies would use, but it's completely out of touch with reality.
Corporations throw away millions of dollars just to get people to think of their products, this is called advertising. Nobody questions this...
So why is it impossible to understand that a company would give away something with absolutely no chance of making any money, to get people to think of their other products?
The goal of a company is to make money, but that doesn't mean that every single action must result in the company making money, merely that the whole series of actions a company take be designed to earn money. Advertising doesn't make money, advertising helps sell products. Giving old games away doesn't make money, new customers interested in your product like does.
So remove the restriction for anyone willing to come in and show you their ID in person.
The whole point is that the system be hard to abuse, by default. Stop spammers from being able to make ten fake accounts per day without leaving home.
I don't think EULAs are binding, for many reasons, but your defense wouldn't work.
If you ask someone to do something for you, you're liable for their actions in doing so. If you ask me to steal you a car, you're guilty, though not of theft, instead it's conspiracy to commit, or some other 'supporting' crime.
We're free and clear with the Cue Cat scanners because they gave them away. They could give them away free with any labelling they wanted, people would still be completely within their legal rights to do whatever theyt wanted to the device.
If they want it to be binding they need to ask people to agree to the contract *before* they get the device, and they can't give them away unsolicited.
So, click whatever they insist you click to make it install.
They can't take away your right to use the software you purchased, so by putting in a contract you must 'agree' to in order to use that product renders the contract void.
To get around that they'd have to have 'I Agree', 'Cancel', and 'I Disagree, Install Anyway' buttons. Because they don't, you're free to install that software even if it means clicking 'I Agree'.
It doesn't really matter, the EULA is already unenforcable before that. The fact that the store knows there's an EULA and the software company does (obviously) simply goes to prove their intent - that the contract never be binding.
:)
But once you buy a product (or a license to use, if you choose to see if their way) you *own* that product/license. There may be rights attached to it that you don't own (copyright, etc) but you have all rights necessary to use it in the manner for which is was advertised when you bought it.
If I sell you a software product you have the right to make the copies inherent in using it (on ram, the installed copy, etc) because you couldn't use it otherwise and I sold it to you as a working product...
Anyways, if you buy a product you have the right to use it. The EULA usually offers you the right to use the product for agreeing to the 'contract'. This isn't binding because you already own that right, they're offering you something of no value. Then, they're attempting to withhold your right to use the software because the 'I DISagree' button cancels the install. This is coercion, they're forcing you to do something in order to exercise your rights. It'd be like me threatening to take your car unless you bought my tires.
There are other problems with the EULA, but those are the main ones.
Just ignore them, unless they're in your best interest (like Windows Refund Day). They aren't binding on you, but they are binding on the company that issued them. (They can't have offered a contract they knew was invalid, can they?
Sure, I read through all binding contracts before I sign them. But I don't read EULAs before I click through, they're meaningless corporate drivel that isn't enforcable.
EULAs violate many of the basic contract principles (they aren't voluntary because the company is withholding something you paid for until you sign an unrelated contract, they don't offer you anything because you already paid to use the software, etc.) The only way an EULA could be binding is with some UCITA-type law, and 'they' passed that precisely because 'they' knew that EULAs aren't at all enforceable.
Technically, an EULA just can't be forced upon you for the purchase of software you already bought. If you like the EULA you can take the company up on its offer (like you did) and it will be binding, because you're waiving some of your rights.
But you can click-through without fear, if the only way to get around the contract to use the product you legally purchased is by clicking 'I Agree' then that button has no more legal significance than 'Next'.
A company could make an EULA binding, IF they didn't make it mandatory, and offered something you didn't already own (an extended service contract perhaps). Or, in the case of shareware where you didn't buy the product before seeing the EULA.
But a hidden contract (in the box, can't be read till it's purchased and taken home) isn't binding.
Nope.
You pay for a phone line, and your ISP pays for their phone lines. The telco gets paid for their job of local data transfer. The ISP buys their backbone from someone else.
I don't see how the telco pays anyone in this, but they do get paid by the people on both ends of the telephone call.
The only way the telco pays someone to carry the data farther is with long distance. If they don't carry it long distance, then they don't have to pay anyone else.
Anyways, as everyone else said, if the telco contracts to provide flat-rate local service, then they should provide flat-rate local service, it's a contract they entered into fairly.
If they can't handle it, well tough, maybe they go out of business. Someone will jump in and offer bandwidth (for voice or data) at a price that they can sustain. This is the case where a free market economy works.
My culture is a mishmash of other cultures, I have no set ancestral culture. I do what I want to do, based on the choices available. That is how I *know* that my culture is far superior to yours. Your culture (if it's the same as that of the people around you) is inferior because it isn't designed around you. Cultures serve to bring people together, by enforcing similarity. That's bad.
:) None of that would be part of the 'culture' I'd have grown up with had my parents been strongly into the one set of ideas, but it serves to make me quite happy.
I want to be as individual as I want, then seek out other people who sought the same things independently.
Your culture can serve to make you another proverbial brick in the wall, you can live up to all the stereotypes and be just like everyone else.
I'm racially a mutt, but I tend to like Irish music, German food, British humor, Belgian chocolate
You can go hang out with your racial peers, I'll avoid you just like I avoid any other racist.
I think you misunderstood the original poster's rant...
He was saying that it's very arrogant to go to a country where you don't speak the language, and where you don't even try.
There was no judgement about which language is better. An English speaker is rude if they travel and expect people to cater to their language, a spanish/japanese/french speaker is rude if they travel and expect people to cater to them (outside of tourist traps) in their native language.
Further, imho, it is very destructive to the idea of a community to continue speaking your native language in public (building little mini-communities) and not teaching your children the local language. The natives of the area will never really warm to someone they can't talk to and you'll find yourself getting treated badly just because nobody can talk to you.
I do agree with the previous poster about immigration. With the possible exception of refugees (who I think should be trained in the native language as soon as possible) I'd turn away everyone who wasn't fairly fluent in the native language. If you bring someone into a country where they don't speak the language they're either stuck in the home, or dealing with a local minority culture. In either case they're not helping the locals at all and really aren't wanted.
Yes it would but let's be realistic. The fact is that there is a very strong interdependence between language and culture. An universal language would need an universal culture, that's impossible. We would have to live in the same latitude, grow up eating the same things, watching the same landscapes, thinking, discussing, joking in the same fashion, everything, everywhere would be homogeneous. Is that your notion of an ideal world?
I disagree with the idea that a culture and a language must be connected. I work with a guy who barely speaks English, yet he completely embraces local culture to the exclusion of his ancestral culture. And I know people who speak English on opposite sides of the Earth who are from completely different cultures.
I know a Canadian trapper who only rarely comes close enough to town to see other people, a few high-class socialites, a Malaysian girl, an Austrian family, a Tanzanian couple, and many others in my home town (Vancouver BC) who are so different as to be part of a completely different culture.
There's much more of a language barrier between me and a Scottish friend of mine who grew up in many ways similar to me and has an identical culture, than between me and most of the others, despite the fact that their lives are vastly different than mine.
I think it would be a good idea if everyone spoke the same language, and I think that technology makes that inevitable. Many parents I know don't bother teaching their children their ancestral language because they can get by just as well without it. Think what it'll be like in the future where everywhere is wired, but to access the majority of the services you'll have to speak/read English... (Not that you said anything about probability, just desirability.)
On the 'darwinian' angle, many cultural traits are useless. I don't care if my ancestors (a hard group to nail down, I'm a mix of six 'races' in the last two generation.) did some silly thing. It may be neat from a historical lesson to learn the reasons behind eating turkey for Thanksgiving, but I'd prefer to have a ham. And I feel similarly about more 'important' things too, if they're relevant to me now, they will be part of my culture. If they aren't, I don't really care.
It's been a while since I've read the book, but I think there was a period of time where he was flying, if only sitting in the seat while the auto-pilot did the flying, so that the real pilot could piss, or sleep, or something.
That and the bit with him playing doctor, where they left him in charge one night, as the senior doctor, was kinda scary.
In (a), it says "is primarilly designed ... "
... "
It doesn't say anything about circumventing copyright, just circumventing access controls. It doesn't matter if you intend the device to be legally used on your own materials, it still circumvents an access control mechanism.
in (b) in says "... limited commercially significant purpose
If you create this device to access your own works it will have no commercial use, let alone outside of circumventing access controls.
This is why DeCSS would have been squashed under any circumstances. It has no commercial purpose, the players that will use it are free. It also has no other use, it exists to view DVDs, like a DVD player abvously does.
The law is (imho) an obvious attempt to squash any form of competition against the (mon/duo)poly situation where a limited cartel of companies produce the movies and the mechanism to view them.
Try _The Fire Upon the Deep_ by Vernor Vinge. It's about a galaxy full of beings, some on their first climb up from animals, some from fallen civilizations, some that have transcended physical being and are in many ways gods... Yet none of them are 'good' or 'bad'.
:)
Besides, it's fun to read a book where one of the main characters majored in 'applied theology'.
I like the view of a galaxy full of critters, it seems more realistic to me that we'd be in the middle, fairly good at stuff, but not the brightest, or the strongest, or anything. We didn't evolve in a way that required any one thing above all else, so I doubt we'd be better than a specialized creature.
So because one company (or person) does something, everyone should?
I'm not saying that everything *is* roses. I'm just saying that anyone who does something despicable is despicable, despite their excuse that everyone else is doing it.
I refuse to support a despicable action. I may have to support a company that has been despicable, but I won't support one of those decisions directly.
Pathetic. Are you twelve? Your rationalizations seem to be from someone of that age.
Just because someone else does something doesn't mean that you should too.
Companies are as companies do, if they play dirty, they are dirty.
Yeah, it's tough to play by the rules. That would be a good excuse for me to cheat on my taxes, steal whenever I could, sabotage any competition, etc. I mean, it's tough out there, so why should I be expected to follow all the rules?
I do expect that mistakes will happen, what I don't accept is when companies intentionally break the law because they can tie the case up for years if anyone sues them, or when a company uses strong-arm tactics against those who are unable to fight back.
FYI: Nobody compared Intel to the Mafia, the comparison was between their actions.
If Intel does whatever 'need to be done' to dominate, by any barely legal means, does that really seem like an unfair comparison? People seem to cut companies *way* too much slack when they're trying to make money. I think it's some little Ayn Rand thing, but it's insane. Nobody cuts a thief any slack when he breaks into your home and steals something, even if he's doing it for a profit. How is it different when a company with an army of lawyers traps you in some barely (if at all) legal trap of theirs and threatens to break you through legal fees? It's basically a protection racket.
I'm all for people trying to make a profit, when they follow the same rules everyone else has to follow.
Yes, actually I *do* think the RAMBUS fiasco was intentional... Well, the first part of it anyways.
They [Intel] wanted to get more control over the industry. They do this by developing a technology and then licensing its use (witness MMX, SSE, etc). They knew that PCs needed more memory bandwidth, and they sought a solution, that much is reasonable. But then they ended up choosing a solution that would lead everyone to buying a new type of ram, which their strategic partner (who Intel owns a bit of) held the patents on...
They tried to force everyone to use a new technology because they got kickbacks from the sales of that technology, not because it was better. They did they by linking their product (CPUs and chipsets) to those of another company (RAMBUS's RDRAM). In many markets this is illegal, it'd be like GM putting a special tire-detection chip on their cars which wouldn't let the car work without GM-approved tires (which would of course cost three times as much.)
This little scheme backfired because AMD and VIA were here to give consumers enough choice.
So, Intel didn't choose to be screwed over in the RAMBUS deal but they deserve it because they intended to screw customers over, locking everyone into a patent-enforced monopoly.
Maybe all companies would do this... maybe AMD will try. But I'll be against any company who does, no need to reward that sort of behavior.
It's not actually a copyright violation. It might be a contract violation if they agreed to something when they made an account, but it still wouldn't be a copyright violation.
Copyright *can* cover pulling addresses from lists and all, but only when the organization shows creative intent. An alphabetical list of phone numbers, no. A street-by-street listing of number, maybe. But in any case, to use that information isn't a copyright violation, only reproducing it would be.
So why not limit new accounts to 50 pieces of email per day until the account is a few months old?
And run a few simple filters on the mail to check if it's all got the same body text, or similar addresses, or something, flag it for a human to look at.
Or, just keep all accounts from sending more than 50 pieces per day unless the user has specifically requested a higher limit - then watch the people who do for a while to make sure it's not spam.
This doesn't even entail reading the email, unless it all comes up as identical... just looking at addresses and sending patterns.
Blocking access to external mail servers would be a good idea too, at least until people ask for that to be changed on their account.
That way, anonymous spammers wouldn't be able to create and abuse tons of accounts but regular users would, at worst, have to email the support staff to get the email limit and such removed.
I agree, it's called representative democracy but when they don't actually have to represent you it sounds a bit hollow...
I've often thought that the party system should be outlawed - they promise to represent you but then they get into power and vote for the party line, something opposite of what their constituents want.
There was a case of it in BC 5-8 years ago (I don't remember) where someone polled most of a district and found that 85% of people who responded wanted one thing - their MP still voted the other way.
I think they should be sued, for breach of contract maybe, treason at the outside... (it's basically subversion of the system.)