No, smarter minds have been over this. Watch Clerks, re civilian contractors on the Death Star.
Seriously though, where do you think the shitty people get the money and the supplies to stay in business, except from you totally non-complicit people who keep dealing with them despite anything they may to do innocent puppies?
moderating me into the floor for being a "M$" shill
Well, you do see the requirements not in terms of what the users truly want, but what Silverlight does, (which is copy flash) so it's not surprising you that what you think is needed is some lame flash-happy thing like Youtube.
I *just* showed a group of people around Youtube (they sent me a joke video in email, I showed them how to find it on Youtube instead of having to email it around). Their whole complaint about the site was how it was this crappy little player embedded in the page. Nothing worked right, and this was on a new laptop running vista. When we tried to maximize the video it stopped and reloaded, starting the download and playback from scratch. When we tried to thumb through the movie it jerked, jumped back some random amount, buffered sections it had already downloaded, etc. The UI wouldn't expand usefully, so we all had to cluster around the laptop.
Pretty much nothing about it was intuitive or useful.
What they asked for, SPECIFICALLY, was the video to pop up in their REGULAR MEDIA PLAYER (one with controls that works, that streams reliably, etc) and for youtube to present the new videos as a list with thumbnail instead of this popping up over the video you just watched (got accidentally clicked more than once, which then again, probably is the point...)
So, you seem big on pushing how Obama really needs to use some crappy new MS clone of a Adobe brain-fart, so that the people who could otherwise just click on a streaming video link on a webpage now have to navigate some flash-crap that crawled out of the sewer, obeying no rules of god or UI, and all of this you advocate in the name of true freedom! Freedom from the tyranny of RMS!
Well, yes, you do seem like just a bit of a loon.
Thanks, but I'll have MY freedom served as an HTTP-compliant web-page and a selection of download links.
I'm sure the post you're responding to is a joke anyways, but do you really think there are special "Enterprise grade" USB gizmos, do you? Like the same store that has $60,000 hammers for NASA also carries $1800 4-port USB hubs and corporate grade keyboards for $7500.
Why does the amount of work you put into something matter? Maybe some other guy composes a better song off the cuff. I'd "copy" either that I found catchy, either by singing it to myself or making an MP3. I don't consider either theft because both are just an idea.
Perhaps the first guy to put cheese on pizza was going against the grain, doing something amazing and innovative, but I'd copy him too.
It's a huge jump from voluntary though unpaid labor to forced slavery. Perhaps a bit specious...
IBMs crime was in lying about the problems. I had problems with my 75gxp and the techs, the manager, everyone I could talk to about the problem, swore that the drives were just fine, that my problem was an isolated one, etc. In defiance of their own marketing they tried to tell me the drive wasn't rated for more than casual use (4-6h/day), etc.
Their policy (supposedly) is to give someone a different model if the one they bought is a lemon but they refused to google for "75gxp issues", or anything else, that would have made the total failure of the line obvious. It's bad enough they produced something without adequate testing, but then to lie about it and send known defective replacements...
Instead of another drive, from a non-failing line, they sent me another 75gxp (not even new according to SMART) which failed soon after.
Yes, everything can fail but companies that lie about it aren't safe to deal with. IBM is evidently a corporate liar, as their institutional blindness was far beyond accidental.
Note quite right either. Yes, there needs to be a market for the resources of a fallen business, and patents are as valid as copyrights...
BUT, patent trolls don't buy proven patents, or ones they think will be useful (and thus valuable). Those patents are bought by honest speculators - people who will expect people will want its value and thus pay for it.
The trolls buy the patents that should never have been granted, the ones that are so obvious you could cry, and even then they don't offer licenses to people, they sit and wait until other people invent the very same thing, and only then do the finalize the patent application, or otherwise make it more visible and extort money from companies who have invented the same basic solutions without using their patent. The goal of patents was to benefit everyone (the patented technique would be revealed) and reward the inventor. Here the technique is of no value, so there should be no reward (and no patent).
It's outright intentional theft from moment one. They wouldn't buy a patent so useless that people were already doing fine without it unless they intended to hold people hostage.
Loser pays won't work unless you adjust for the financial load.
The RIAA can sue a college student and spend a million dollars, let's say 1000 times more than the student has, and easily afford to pay this if they lose. The student can only afford maybe $100 to actually pursue justice and could never hope the pay the RIAA legal team's lunch bill if he lost.
But we all know the court system is worthless anyways because the party with the most money wins - even if they don't "win" you die a pauper, likely with the trial still going sixty years later.
So we fix both problems at once by pooling legal funds - the college student pays his $100, the RIAA pays as much as they wish ($1M for instance), and each gets $500,050 to spend.
The goal, to society, is for a trial to discover truth and produce justice. To let any side bully the other, or snow it under with paperwork, only perverts that.
But they do absolutely nothing for society. Bank robbers have capital - the masks, guns, the car (even if stolen), the "plan" is valuable IP. They're risking their capital versus greater rewards. If they merely had a Marque and the bank were a Spanish Galleon (and this the 1500s...) this would be legal...
Real patents - ones that function as society intends and help people, are disclosed. They're advertised. The company WANTS people to know that their methods are easier. They want you to use their proven tech. Nothing is a secret, and everyone gets something of value.
Bad patents though, are ones on things that are so obvious anyone could have invented it, and would as soon as they did some new thing. Our patent system doesn't regard independent discovery as an automatic invalidation of the patent, so when other people INVENT that same thing, these trolls lie and claim infringement. (How could you infringe when the patent was a secret?)
No, all these people do is buy a trivial patent (if it wasn't trivial they couldn't hope other people would stumble into their grasp) and hold real innovators hostage. Nothing but lawyers, and only the useless ones, not ones who practice constitutional law or defend people from the RIAA, and their scummy clients prosper. Just like theft - a small gain to a few at the cost of massive devastation to their victims. Don't mistakenly thank these people for anything, they're trying their best to burn society because they can profit on the scraps.
Yes, of course they offer licenses, AFTER they sit.
If they offered licenses up-front it wouldn't be a scam. They'd have to have a useful tech and people would see that and pay to use it, new products would be made, everyone WOULD benefit.
But in the patent-troll scenario they obtain a patent on a useless piece of tech, not something nobody wants, but something so simple everyone independently invents it, and they wait until everyone does when they suddenly "offer" licenses. If, by offer, you mean threaten to destroy the livelihoods via harassment lawsuit of people who don't immediately pay them.
And yes there is profit - patent trolls and patent lawyers make out like the bandits they are. Everyone else loses. But nobody considers these to be people, and it ignores the extermination costs, so it was simpler to say that nobody profits.
You say you've been keeping up, but your words betray a total lack of comprehension. Are you a troll yourself, do you own stock in RAMBUS, or are you just stupid?
civil war would have far worse effect on the US than current copyright law
Civil war? The shooting of RIAA (or other SLAPP-happy) execs? You must think they've got a lot more power than they have.
special forces hit squads doing summary executions of downloaders
Hit squads doing life-destroying missions, simply sans the murder. Do you think a 1-million dollar judgment, even if the cost and stress of the trial before it, aren't going to ruin the life of someone who at worst is a shoplifter?
It's not the rightness of the issue, or if the jury will ultimately deliver a just verdict, but the fact that the trial is intended to destroy the life of the defendant, regardless of outcome. Where the outcome would be undesirable it will be delayed at the lifespan of a corporation, not its human victim.
Considering people have been driven to suicide by SLAPP suits, RIAA attacks, harassment by the CoS, etc, I wouldn't lose much sleep if someone went the other way in response to the fanatical attacks.
It's a troll if you refuse to consider the other sides and simply post, "but it is theft". Have you considered that your view might be a bit rigid?
Consider if you had spent a year... employer shows you the door, and never pays you
Then you had a bad contract.
distributes your program for free over the net.
So you're upset that people get to use the program?
Copyright is an attempt to increase the public good, enriching anyone specifically is just the current means to accomplish this. I see a societal good in enforcing copyright against counterfeit publishers who sell what appears to be an authentic copy of the actual official run, thus deceiving consumers. In other words, like a trademark. But I don't see how restricting dispersion of that work/idea helps society.
But I don't see why your music deserves more protection than my catchy phrase, the idea of putting cheese on pizza, Einstein's discoveries, or anything else. We're all a product of our world and nothing was discovered/invented in a vacuum. You can collect your cut when you cough up a cut for the people who invented math, language, modern music, etc.
And the final nail in my respect of copyright's coffin - its ability to be used to control access to the work. The idea that you should be able to withdraw your words from public scrutiny is abhorrent.
I see no reason why your song deserves more respect than someone's paper on a mathematical problem, or is more worthy of taxpayer-subsidized welfare-through-government-monopoly.
Think how Newton's family feels whenever you calculate a derivative without paying them. It's called theft of science!
Sure, that works, if someone's there to point out that your current friendly treatment at the hands of others would be a better strategy for you to use in the future, and then if nobody else's feelings mattered because the typical person would just ignore the idea and continue acting in the same rude fashion.
If they are the victim of their usual attitudes it will stand out in a different way. Likely they will be hyper-sensitive to similar circumstances and, if they aren't unredeemable anyways, will be nicer to other people in the future now that they understand the pain they cause.
So while I hope that everyone gets more reasonable treatment, I hope that the jerks get enough of their own treatment, either randomly or thrown at their specifically as a learning tool, to adjust their behavior.
Okay. The right to marry a woman is one that everyone should have. Many feel a baby is essential to a family and if they cannot or choose not to carry one themselves, they should have the right to marry a woman to do so.
The right to marry a man is one that anyone should have. On average men are larger, stronger, and earn more. If one desired feelings of physical or financial safety, perhaps while raising a child they themselves had, inherited (god-parent), or adopted, they should have the right to marry a man to help with the financial burden and protecting the child.
Also, you wouldn't swear to your genetic status, it'd be tested.
As for clothing restrictions on women, where it's being fought it's being fought on gender equality grounds. As a restriction that's placed on women, but not men, and not for a compelling reason to society, it is unreasonable and is being struck down. Other stupid laws, or legal systems that cling to them, will follow.
No, it WOULD be justified for people to "harass" her for dropping out of school because of Pepsi. Not only are people justified in expressing their opinion (and her in ignoring it), but it would be a stupid reason and worth pointing out as such.
She deserves harassment because of her over-reaction. Rather than just demand Dell take the computer back, or call Visa and return it while canceling payment, she invented stupid reasons about how hard it was to use and whined about it.
Someone who blew the lid off the tech support scandal (how ISPs get stuck supporting everything Windows related because Microsoft refuses to) would be thanked. Someone who cried like a baby about how hard IE was to use because the buttons looked different than Firefox's would be mocked.
But we don't subsidize expensive parts of child-rearing half as often as allow (which is like encourage for people who don't need much) people to have more, which is what the other guy was talking about.
If we really want kids to go to school why do we arrange to give their parent's arcane tax breaks instead of just making schools free? If we want to make sure they eat well why do we send their parent's money for cigarettes and alcohol instead of having free food kiosks?
Whatever the intention may be, it just serves to make children significantly cheaper for poor parents, insignificantly cheaper for richer parents, and do absolutely nothing to get the benefits to the children. It's like sending aid to refuge camps, via the dictator who put the people there...
But stoning people for sex is A-OK. As is bringing children up to believe in a sky-fairy that wants them to kill for the forces of good.
How about we ditch this fake tolerance stuff and just mock the people who believe in stupid shit? Instead we're supposed to pretend that grown-ups are sane even when they believe in a cross between Santa and Charles Manson (he doesn't exist, but he's sure you should kill in his name).
The only important thing is that intolerance be based on real reasons, and acted upon at proper levels. I do not tolerate religious people (in general) because they are incapable of understanding cause and effect, the problems with faith, the problems inherent in trusting a human-written book claiming to be the word of god, etc, etc. I don't want them burned at the stake, merely not in my home, business, or school, and not mucking with the laws. I feel similarly about the Time-Cube guy, for similar reality denying reasons.
Technically he was correct - "LEGALLY binding". A secret contract is never a valid contract, and a EULA purports to be a contract. Thus it's NEVER a valid one. Any enforcement of it is non-legal because it isn't a contract.
That doesn't mean you aren't going to be found in violation, just that it will be a miscarriage of justice when it happens.
Of course I only read the summary so I don't know if they're talking about an actual EULA or just any fine-print.
Reasonably though, if you can click through something without noticing it, it wasn't an (enforceable) contract either. People let shiny technology blind them to simple legal realities - contracts are meant to be between two parties who mutually agree and desire the contract. Fundamental contract law is written to require mutual assent, knowledge of the contract, etc. Has been for hundreds of years, as an expressed standard, not just a byproduct of circumstance.
Any modern lawyer can come along and find a ton of flaws with this argument, but only because there are a ton of stupid precedents in any given area. Gateway's EULA really did help them out in one trial, but that doesn't mean I could simple write a one-sided contract and slip it under IBM's door at night. The fundamental nature of contracts hasn't changed - people merely get fooled by the new tricks like EULAs - like book licenses a century ago - until cooler heads amend the law to say "and no, X doesn't count either."
For instance, such as (US) copyright law now explicitly stating that no license is required to use copyrighted software - to put to rest this idea that you need special permission above and beyond possession (from the EULA of course) to use software. Years later it's only slowly seeming to reach judges, let alone the general public. Well, and most lawyers are roughly pro-EULA in general, as a strengthening of the everyone-needs-a-lawyer-to-sneeze attitude. To them the legal system is a job, not something that attempts to guarantee fairness to the people.
How is it not immoral to build a product you know is going to be sold with a EULA that purports to make it illegal to look disassemble, run on the OS of your choice, modify, etc...
That's pretty much trying to steal from the user, take their money and not give them what they expect from a sale.
Very little commercial software actually provides an honest product (no false disclaimers of liability, no exclusions of normal usage, etc). Not none, but certainly nothing that comes with a post-sale contract. Nothing that disclaims any actual use, and all liability.
However, the implication that people doing work (or, at least, coding) for money cannot be trusted seems to be quite common amongst the OSS crowd
It's not the for-profit nature people don't trust, but the fact that these studies can not be verified, the standards judged, or the number of failed studies known. It's misleading to report positive results without listing negative results, yet no auditing company that I've seen insists its clients do this...
such little respect for their peers' ethics
What ethics? Organizations that provide meaningless (non-verifiable, etc) results for marketing campaigns aren't really ethically driven.
For those (the overwhelming majority) who lack the resources to audit the code themselves, the ability OSS engenders to do so is moot, and they have to trust someone else to do it.
You can easily (within three lines pasted into a shell) start looking for specific code constructs in most Debian packages, for example. This doesn't prove security but can be used to find potential vulnerabilities. A very real scenario would be a company choosing a product by scanning for known problem issues (scanf, strcpy, etc) and then having the best-seeming products randomly spot-audited by multiple contractors.
Thankfully people without direct personal knowledge of coding can hire people who have this knowledge. Choosing code with known vulnerabilities and cross-checking results lets you evaluate the honesty of the auditors.
I have personally audited none of the closed-source software I use, and THOUSANDS of lines of open-source software. Nothing is perfect, but open-source is just obviously better for this.
With a few exceptions, taxpayers DO get to inspect city/state/federal equipment. And surely if I saw a fire, right next to a firetruck whose firemen were all incapacitated by eating bad seafood, I'd jump in and help as best I could.
Guess what? It's not your fucking job
It's not my fucking job, which is why we hire firemen, but when they can't do it, it's MY world which means it's my responsibility to see that it gets done.
You do not have the right to break the law to prove a system is insecure.
Surely you misunderstand. I do have that right. It has a cost to exercise, namely proving to a judge (and the rest of society) the worth of my actions versus their cost, but I do have that right. If you did not have the "right" to jaywalk, you could not avoid a car on the sidewalk. We have the right but occasionally must justify it.
Again, it's that antisocial "geek" crap, thinking that somehow everything is your domain or responsibility. It's not.
And how old are you? You've got this funny "If anything is wrong, just call a teacher and they'll make it all better" philosophy. What do you do when the teacher is the problem, or having the problem?
I can prove your door lock is insecure [...]
Yeah. But this situation is like them offering to demo the lock-bumping in the middle of the day, to the homeowner (MBTA) and others, but the homeowner reporting it as a B&E anyway.
Nothing they did was harmful. They snooped around a bit, queried publicly accessible servers, edited their property (the card) to test a theory, and went to make the information public (instead of selling it to the mafia).
writing "BOO!" on your wall.
You're the one bringing vandalism into this. Everyone else would have settled for a post-it note with a description of the weakness and what to do to prevent it.
You do not have the right to break the law
You live in a sick little world, if people are just supposed to watch fires burn, and systems break, because the appointed officials are incompetent and the elected officials uncaring. And I mean, my god, a LAW! That's like a rule one of those people made, and had written down! Can you imagine, a rule, on paper, it would be so sacrosanct you would be struck down by the hand of god himself if you even asked to read it, let alone challenge it!
Seriously, breaking laws has a cost to society. One quick trial + one legal-aid lawyer + some police time = $afairbit. But when the cost of leaving a problem uninvestigated or untreated is higher, it's worth it. This is why we have Good-Samaritan laws and protect whistle-blowers.
You say it's illegal for them to do this. I have to assume you mean Psystar, though what proof you'd have other than a hidden post-sale contract, I don't know.
Apple's just suing Psystar because they have money to burn and hate all competition and users. Like Microsoft and Blizzard. Not because Psystar is actually doing anything harmful, but simply because by abusing their users' ability to choose, and another company's ability to do business freely, they'll increase their lock-in a bit more and theoretically choke a few more dollars out of you. Yay Apple! And thank all you differently-thinking people who fund their various attacks on the freedoms of others! Yay you.
Imagine a timeline, CEO A's team introduces a fatal flaw, he leaves. CEO B is there when the accusations about the flaw surface. It's B's pay and reputation on the line.
If B fails to deal with the crisis he'll be fired and make a fraction of A.
If B deals well with the crisis he'll retire normally, making as much as A.
If B covers it up or SLAPPs it into submission for C to deal with, he'll still make as much money as if it didn't happen.
CEO pay needs to be based on the success of the company yes, but only relative to how well the company could have done. And more money needs to be paid in trust, based on the company's long-term success and the ex-management's continued lack of criminal charges related to their running of the company.
Don't they all mind being wrong about something tautological? It's called breaking because the idea is that things get broken... Otherwise the crime would be called 'Entering'. Don't you (presumably a citizen) mind living in an area where the law is essentially random?
Great, then you realize that the MBTA system belonged to the MIT students, as they were taxpayers and concerned citizens. You surely support their dedicated examining of it for flaws, above and beyond what was expected, and even went far enough to expose management malfeasance in specing, building, and defending a broken system.
Had these patriots not exposed the problems they found, the good people of their city might have been secretly exploited for years and the incompetent officials who let if happen would have escaped notice or punishment.
Surely you are tremendously happy that events played out this way... Right?
If it doesn't belong to you, don't mess with it. That's lesson some of us learned when we were in kindergarten.
Here's a hint. The pope already partitioned off the world and didn't save any for you. Either vanish in a puff of light or realize that rules are made to be broken.
Slashdot Mirror
No, smarter minds have been over this. Watch Clerks, re civilian contractors on the Death Star.
Seriously though, where do you think the shitty people get the money and the supplies to stay in business, except from you totally non-complicit people who keep dealing with them despite anything they may to do innocent puppies?
moderating me into the floor for being a "M$" shill
Well, you do see the requirements not in terms of what the users truly want, but what Silverlight does, (which is copy flash) so it's not surprising you that what you think is needed is some lame flash-happy thing like Youtube.
I *just* showed a group of people around Youtube (they sent me a joke video in email, I showed them how to find it on Youtube instead of having to email it around). Their whole complaint about the site was how it was this crappy little player embedded in the page. Nothing worked right, and this was on a new laptop running vista. When we tried to maximize the video it stopped and reloaded, starting the download and playback from scratch. When we tried to thumb through the movie it jerked, jumped back some random amount, buffered sections it had already downloaded, etc. The UI wouldn't expand usefully, so we all had to cluster around the laptop.
Pretty much nothing about it was intuitive or useful.
What they asked for, SPECIFICALLY, was the video to pop up in their REGULAR MEDIA PLAYER (one with controls that works, that streams reliably, etc) and for youtube to present the new videos as a list with thumbnail instead of this popping up over the video you just watched (got accidentally clicked more than once, which then again, probably is the point...)
So, you seem big on pushing how Obama really needs to use some crappy new MS clone of a Adobe brain-fart, so that the people who could otherwise just click on a streaming video link on a webpage now have to navigate some flash-crap that crawled out of the sewer, obeying no rules of god or UI, and all of this you advocate in the name of true freedom! Freedom from the tyranny of RMS!
Well, yes, you do seem like just a bit of a loon.
Thanks, but I'll have MY freedom served as an HTTP-compliant web-page and a selection of download links.
I'm sure the post you're responding to is a joke anyways, but do you really think there are special "Enterprise grade" USB gizmos, do you? Like the same store that has $60,000 hammers for NASA also carries $1800 4-port USB hubs and corporate grade keyboards for $7500.
Why does the amount of work you put into something matter? Maybe some other guy composes a better song off the cuff. I'd "copy" either that I found catchy, either by singing it to myself or making an MP3. I don't consider either theft because both are just an idea.
Perhaps the first guy to put cheese on pizza was going against the grain, doing something amazing and innovative, but I'd copy him too.
It's a huge jump from voluntary though unpaid labor to forced slavery. Perhaps a bit specious...
IBMs crime was in lying about the problems. I had problems with my 75gxp and the techs, the manager, everyone I could talk to about the problem, swore that the drives were just fine, that my problem was an isolated one, etc. In defiance of their own marketing they tried to tell me the drive wasn't rated for more than casual use (4-6h/day), etc.
Their policy (supposedly) is to give someone a different model if the one they bought is a lemon but they refused to google for "75gxp issues", or anything else, that would have made the total failure of the line obvious. It's bad enough they produced something without adequate testing, but then to lie about it and send known defective replacements...
Instead of another drive, from a non-failing line, they sent me another 75gxp (not even new according to SMART) which failed soon after.
Yes, everything can fail but companies that lie about it aren't safe to deal with. IBM is evidently a corporate liar, as their institutional blindness was far beyond accidental.
Note quite right either. Yes, there needs to be a market for the resources of a fallen business, and patents are as valid as copyrights...
BUT, patent trolls don't buy proven patents, or ones they think will be useful (and thus valuable). Those patents are bought by honest speculators - people who will expect people will want its value and thus pay for it.
The trolls buy the patents that should never have been granted, the ones that are so obvious you could cry, and even then they don't offer licenses to people, they sit and wait until other people invent the very same thing, and only then do the finalize the patent application, or otherwise make it more visible and extort money from companies who have invented the same basic solutions without using their patent. The goal of patents was to benefit everyone (the patented technique would be revealed) and reward the inventor. Here the technique is of no value, so there should be no reward (and no patent).
It's outright intentional theft from moment one. They wouldn't buy a patent so useless that people were already doing fine without it unless they intended to hold people hostage.
Loser pays won't work unless you adjust for the financial load.
The RIAA can sue a college student and spend a million dollars, let's say 1000 times more than the student has, and easily afford to pay this if they lose. The student can only afford maybe $100 to actually pursue justice and could never hope the pay the RIAA legal team's lunch bill if he lost.
But we all know the court system is worthless anyways because the party with the most money wins - even if they don't "win" you die a pauper, likely with the trial still going sixty years later.
So we fix both problems at once by pooling legal funds - the college student pays his $100, the RIAA pays as much as they wish ($1M for instance), and each gets $500,050 to spend.
The goal, to society, is for a trial to discover truth and produce justice. To let any side bully the other, or snow it under with paperwork, only perverts that.
But they do absolutely nothing for society. Bank robbers have capital - the masks, guns, the car (even if stolen), the "plan" is valuable IP. They're risking their capital versus greater rewards. If they merely had a Marque and the bank were a Spanish Galleon (and this the 1500s...) this would be legal...
Real patents - ones that function as society intends and help people, are disclosed. They're advertised. The company WANTS people to know that their methods are easier. They want you to use their proven tech. Nothing is a secret, and everyone gets something of value.
Bad patents though, are ones on things that are so obvious anyone could have invented it, and would as soon as they did some new thing. Our patent system doesn't regard independent discovery as an automatic invalidation of the patent, so when other people INVENT that same thing, these trolls lie and claim infringement. (How could you infringe when the patent was a secret?)
No, all these people do is buy a trivial patent (if it wasn't trivial they couldn't hope other people would stumble into their grasp) and hold real innovators hostage. Nothing but lawyers, and only the useless ones, not ones who practice constitutional law or defend people from the RIAA, and their scummy clients prosper. Just like theft - a small gain to a few at the cost of massive devastation to their victims. Don't mistakenly thank these people for anything, they're trying their best to burn society because they can profit on the scraps.
Yes, of course they offer licenses, AFTER they sit.
If they offered licenses up-front it wouldn't be a scam. They'd have to have a useful tech and people would see that and pay to use it, new products would be made, everyone WOULD benefit.
But in the patent-troll scenario they obtain a patent on a useless piece of tech, not something nobody wants, but something so simple everyone independently invents it, and they wait until everyone does when they suddenly "offer" licenses. If, by offer, you mean threaten to destroy the livelihoods via harassment lawsuit of people who don't immediately pay them.
And yes there is profit - patent trolls and patent lawyers make out like the bandits they are. Everyone else loses. But nobody considers these to be people, and it ignores the extermination costs, so it was simpler to say that nobody profits.
You say you've been keeping up, but your words betray a total lack of comprehension. Are you a troll yourself, do you own stock in RAMBUS, or are you just stupid?
civil war would have far worse effect on the US than current copyright law
Civil war? The shooting of RIAA (or other SLAPP-happy) execs? You must think they've got a lot more power than they have.
special forces hit squads doing summary executions of downloaders
Hit squads doing life-destroying missions, simply sans the murder. Do you think a 1-million dollar judgment, even if the cost and stress of the trial before it, aren't going to ruin the life of someone who at worst is a shoplifter?
It's not the rightness of the issue, or if the jury will ultimately deliver a just verdict, but the fact that the trial is intended to destroy the life of the defendant, regardless of outcome. Where the outcome would be undesirable it will be delayed at the lifespan of a corporation, not its human victim.
Considering people have been driven to suicide by SLAPP suits, RIAA attacks, harassment by the CoS, etc, I wouldn't lose much sleep if someone went the other way in response to the fanatical attacks.
It's a troll if you refuse to consider the other sides and simply post, "but it is theft". Have you considered that your view might be a bit rigid?
Consider if you had spent a year ... employer shows you the door, and never pays you
Then you had a bad contract.
distributes your program for free over the net.
So you're upset that people get to use the program?
Copyright is an attempt to increase the public good, enriching anyone specifically is just the current means to accomplish this. I see a societal good in enforcing copyright against counterfeit publishers who sell what appears to be an authentic copy of the actual official run, thus deceiving consumers. In other words, like a trademark. But I don't see how restricting dispersion of that work/idea helps society.
But I don't see why your music deserves more protection than my catchy phrase, the idea of putting cheese on pizza, Einstein's discoveries, or anything else. We're all a product of our world and nothing was discovered/invented in a vacuum. You can collect your cut when you cough up a cut for the people who invented math, language, modern music, etc.
And the final nail in my respect of copyright's coffin - its ability to be used to control access to the work. The idea that you should be able to withdraw your words from public scrutiny is abhorrent.
I see no reason why your song deserves more respect than someone's paper on a mathematical problem, or is more worthy of taxpayer-subsidized welfare-through-government-monopoly.
Think how Newton's family feels whenever you calculate a derivative without paying them. It's called theft of science!
Sure, that works, if someone's there to point out that your current friendly treatment at the hands of others would be a better strategy for you to use in the future, and then if nobody else's feelings mattered because the typical person would just ignore the idea and continue acting in the same rude fashion.
If they are the victim of their usual attitudes it will stand out in a different way. Likely they will be hyper-sensitive to similar circumstances and, if they aren't unredeemable anyways, will be nicer to other people in the future now that they understand the pain they cause.
So while I hope that everyone gets more reasonable treatment, I hope that the jerks get enough of their own treatment, either randomly or thrown at their specifically as a learning tool, to adjust their behavior.
Okay. The right to marry a woman is one that everyone should have. Many feel a baby is essential to a family and if they cannot or choose not to carry one themselves, they should have the right to marry a woman to do so.
The right to marry a man is one that anyone should have. On average men are larger, stronger, and earn more. If one desired feelings of physical or financial safety, perhaps while raising a child they themselves had, inherited (god-parent), or adopted, they should have the right to marry a man to help with the financial burden and protecting the child.
Also, you wouldn't swear to your genetic status, it'd be tested.
As for clothing restrictions on women, where it's being fought it's being fought on gender equality grounds. As a restriction that's placed on women, but not men, and not for a compelling reason to society, it is unreasonable and is being struck down. Other stupid laws, or legal systems that cling to them, will follow.
No, it WOULD be justified for people to "harass" her for dropping out of school because of Pepsi. Not only are people justified in expressing their opinion (and her in ignoring it), but it would be a stupid reason and worth pointing out as such.
She deserves harassment because of her over-reaction. Rather than just demand Dell take the computer back, or call Visa and return it while canceling payment, she invented stupid reasons about how hard it was to use and whined about it.
Someone who blew the lid off the tech support scandal (how ISPs get stuck supporting everything Windows related because Microsoft refuses to) would be thanked. Someone who cried like a baby about how hard IE was to use because the buttons looked different than Firefox's would be mocked.
But we don't subsidize expensive parts of child-rearing half as often as allow (which is like encourage for people who don't need much) people to have more, which is what the other guy was talking about.
If we really want kids to go to school why do we arrange to give their parent's arcane tax breaks instead of just making schools free? If we want to make sure they eat well why do we send their parent's money for cigarettes and alcohol instead of having free food kiosks?
Whatever the intention may be, it just serves to make children significantly cheaper for poor parents, insignificantly cheaper for richer parents, and do absolutely nothing to get the benefits to the children. It's like sending aid to refuge camps, via the dictator who put the people there...
But the "Traditional Values" Coalition is religious, and thus liars. Why anyone felt the need to go beyond that is baffling.
Religious fundies preaching their brand of genocide. Better than all the other brands of genocide. Yawn.
But stoning people for sex is A-OK. As is bringing children up to believe in a sky-fairy that wants them to kill for the forces of good.
How about we ditch this fake tolerance stuff and just mock the people who believe in stupid shit? Instead we're supposed to pretend that grown-ups are sane even when they believe in a cross between Santa and Charles Manson (he doesn't exist, but he's sure you should kill in his name).
The only important thing is that intolerance be based on real reasons, and acted upon at proper levels. I do not tolerate religious people (in general) because they are incapable of understanding cause and effect, the problems with faith, the problems inherent in trusting a human-written book claiming to be the word of god, etc, etc. I don't want them burned at the stake, merely not in my home, business, or school, and not mucking with the laws. I feel similarly about the Time-Cube guy, for similar reality denying reasons.
Technically he was correct - "LEGALLY binding". A secret contract is never a valid contract, and a EULA purports to be a contract. Thus it's NEVER a valid one. Any enforcement of it is non-legal because it isn't a contract.
That doesn't mean you aren't going to be found in violation, just that it will be a miscarriage of justice when it happens.
Of course I only read the summary so I don't know if they're talking about an actual EULA or just any fine-print.
Reasonably though, if you can click through something without noticing it, it wasn't an (enforceable) contract either. People let shiny technology blind them to simple legal realities - contracts are meant to be between two parties who mutually agree and desire the contract. Fundamental contract law is written to require mutual assent, knowledge of the contract, etc. Has been for hundreds of years, as an expressed standard, not just a byproduct of circumstance.
Any modern lawyer can come along and find a ton of flaws with this argument, but only because there are a ton of stupid precedents in any given area. Gateway's EULA really did help them out in one trial, but that doesn't mean I could simple write a one-sided contract and slip it under IBM's door at night. The fundamental nature of contracts hasn't changed - people merely get fooled by the new tricks like EULAs - like book licenses a century ago - until cooler heads amend the law to say "and no, X doesn't count either."
For instance, such as (US) copyright law now explicitly stating that no license is required to use copyrighted software - to put to rest this idea that you need special permission above and beyond possession (from the EULA of course) to use software. Years later it's only slowly seeming to reach judges, let alone the general public. Well, and most lawyers are roughly pro-EULA in general, as a strengthening of the everyone-needs-a-lawyer-to-sneeze attitude. To them the legal system is a job, not something that attempts to guarantee fairness to the people.
How is it not immoral to build a product you know is going to be sold with a EULA that purports to make it illegal to look disassemble, run on the OS of your choice, modify, etc...
That's pretty much trying to steal from the user, take their money and not give them what they expect from a sale.
Very little commercial software actually provides an honest product (no false disclaimers of liability, no exclusions of normal usage, etc). Not none, but certainly nothing that comes with a post-sale contract. Nothing that disclaims any actual use, and all liability.
However, the implication that people doing work (or, at least, coding) for money cannot be trusted seems to be quite common amongst the OSS crowd
It's not the for-profit nature people don't trust, but the fact that these studies can not be verified, the standards judged, or the number of failed studies known. It's misleading to report positive results without listing negative results, yet no auditing company that I've seen insists its clients do this...
such little respect for their peers' ethics
What ethics? Organizations that provide meaningless (non-verifiable, etc) results for marketing campaigns aren't really ethically driven.
For those (the overwhelming majority) who lack the resources to audit the code themselves, the ability OSS engenders to do so is moot, and they have to trust someone else to do it.
You can easily (within three lines pasted into a shell) start looking for specific code constructs in most Debian packages, for example. This doesn't prove security but can be used to find potential vulnerabilities. A very real scenario would be a company choosing a product by scanning for known problem issues (scanf, strcpy, etc) and then having the best-seeming products randomly spot-audited by multiple contractors.
Thankfully people without direct personal knowledge of coding can hire people who have this knowledge. Choosing code with known vulnerabilities and cross-checking results lets you evaluate the honesty of the auditors.
I have personally audited none of the closed-source software I use, and THOUSANDS of lines of open-source software. Nothing is perfect, but open-source is just obviously better for this.
With a few exceptions, taxpayers DO get to inspect city/state/federal equipment. And surely if I saw a fire, right next to a firetruck whose firemen were all incapacitated by eating bad seafood, I'd jump in and help as best I could.
Guess what? It's not your fucking job
It's not my fucking job, which is why we hire firemen, but when they can't do it, it's MY world which means it's my responsibility to see that it gets done.
You do not have the right to break the law to prove a system is insecure.
Surely you misunderstand. I do have that right. It has a cost to exercise, namely proving to a judge (and the rest of society) the worth of my actions versus their cost, but I do have that right. If you did not have the "right" to jaywalk, you could not avoid a car on the sidewalk. We have the right but occasionally must justify it.
Again, it's that antisocial "geek" crap, thinking that somehow everything is your domain or responsibility. It's not.
And how old are you? You've got this funny "If anything is wrong, just call a teacher and they'll make it all better" philosophy. What do you do when the teacher is the problem, or having the problem?
I can prove your door lock is insecure [...]
Yeah. But this situation is like them offering to demo the lock-bumping in the middle of the day, to the homeowner (MBTA) and others, but the homeowner reporting it as a B&E anyway.
Nothing they did was harmful. They snooped around a bit, queried publicly accessible servers, edited their property (the card) to test a theory, and went to make the information public (instead of selling it to the mafia).
writing "BOO!" on your wall.
You're the one bringing vandalism into this. Everyone else would have settled for a post-it note with a description of the weakness and what to do to prevent it.
You do not have the right to break the law
You live in a sick little world, if people are just supposed to watch fires burn, and systems break, because the appointed officials are incompetent and the elected officials uncaring. And I mean, my god, a LAW! That's like a rule one of those people made, and had written down! Can you imagine, a rule, on paper, it would be so sacrosanct you would be struck down by the hand of god himself if you even asked to read it, let alone challenge it!
Seriously, breaking laws has a cost to society. One quick trial + one legal-aid lawyer + some police time = $afairbit. But when the cost of leaving a problem uninvestigated or untreated is higher, it's worth it. This is why we have Good-Samaritan laws and protect whistle-blowers.
You say it's illegal for them to do this. I have to assume you mean Psystar, though what proof you'd have other than a hidden post-sale contract, I don't know.
Apple's just suing Psystar because they have money to burn and hate all competition and users. Like Microsoft and Blizzard. Not because Psystar is actually doing anything harmful, but simply because by abusing their users' ability to choose, and another company's ability to do business freely, they'll increase their lock-in a bit more and theoretically choke a few more dollars out of you. Yay Apple! And thank all you differently-thinking people who fund their various attacks on the freedoms of others! Yay you.
It's because of how we pay and blame executives.
Imagine a timeline, CEO A's team introduces a fatal flaw, he leaves. CEO B is there when the accusations about the flaw surface. It's B's pay and reputation on the line.
If B fails to deal with the crisis he'll be fired and make a fraction of A.
If B deals well with the crisis he'll retire normally, making as much as A.
If B covers it up or SLAPPs it into submission for C to deal with, he'll still make as much money as if it didn't happen.
CEO pay needs to be based on the success of the company yes, but only relative to how well the company could have done. And more money needs to be paid in trust, based on the company's long-term success and the ex-management's continued lack of criminal charges related to their running of the company.
Don't they all mind being wrong about something tautological? It's called breaking because the idea is that things get broken... Otherwise the crime would be called 'Entering'. Don't you (presumably a citizen) mind living in an area where the law is essentially random?
Great, then you realize that the MBTA system belonged to the MIT students, as they were taxpayers and concerned citizens. You surely support their dedicated examining of it for flaws, above and beyond what was expected, and even went far enough to expose management malfeasance in specing, building, and defending a broken system.
Had these patriots not exposed the problems they found, the good people of their city might have been secretly exploited for years and the incompetent officials who let if happen would have escaped notice or punishment.
Surely you are tremendously happy that events played out this way... Right?
If it doesn't belong to you, don't mess with it. That's lesson some of us learned when we were in kindergarten.
Here's a hint. The pope already partitioned off the world and didn't save any for you. Either vanish in a puff of light or realize that rules are made to be broken.