Wall Street analysts don't really know how a stock is going to perform. They're just guessing, though usually their guesses err on the side of optimism because they want to please the companies they are "analyzing".
This sounds like a rare exception. Maybe his original assessment was honest and his bosses leaned on him to be more friendly to a major client, or maybe some additional information came to light and he changed his mind.
Nearly all the software advertised in spam is counterfeit, so you can forward spam that advertises software to the BSA. Selling illegal copies of software is something that law-enforcement takes more seriously than spam itself.
A few software companies actually ask you to forward them spam that advertises their products. See Symantec's Spamwatch site as an example.
The competing with rental explantion seems like a red herring. A movie is something that many people only want to see once, or at least once every few months or years, whereas a CD is something they'll listen to repeatedly.
I used to rent CDs from my local library, and I'd copy the good tracks to tape or (later) to MP3. I'd also rent movies, but I was never motivated to copy them.
It's actually even worse than that, because there is no centralized opt-out list. Every company or indicidual maintains its own do-not-spam list, so you have to opt-out of each one individually. Like it used to be with telemarketing before the do-not-call list.
But it's great for spammers: They don't have to worry about dealing with individual state laws, so can spam indiscriminately and know they're immune from prosecution and lawsuits. That is, if they're confined to the U.S. Companies with a presnece in Europe or a country that has an anti-spam law won't be able to get away with it.
This isn't an anology: It's exactly the same! The question isn't really abotu the GPL, it's about how copyright law applies to software: Do the copyright holders of an OS have the right to control how drivers are distributed?
The GPL explicitly states that it's intended only to add rights, not take them away. It isn't a signed contract or a dubiously-legal EULA; it's just a limited copyright permission. If you can create drivers for Windows without permission from Microsoft, you can create drivers for Linux without permission from the kernel contributors.
One difference is that creating drivers for Linux may be easier than for Windows, because the source code is available. But arguing that a programmer merely seeing the source code makes the next thing he/she writes somehow a derivative of that code seems contrary to both the spirit of free software and the nature of creativity. It's like saying that novelists shouldn't read books, or that composers should never listen to music.
To comply with the GPL, they need to make source code available. But it's perfectly possible (and legal, IMHO IANAL) to embed the OS in ROM in such a way that it can't easily be changed. Source code availability is still useful, though: It helps developers of apps understand how the system works, makes security audits possible and means that once the device is no longer produced, it'll be easier to make an emulator.
The downside for the phone makers is that their competitors can also take the source code and use it in their phones, but that's the price they pay for using any pre-existing software (free or not) rather than developing something from scratch. The phone makers are better off standardizing on Linux than Windows (no MS tax), and so are DoCoMo and its customers.
Google is just a company. It isn't evil in the sense of SCO or Enron, but neither is it some great force for good in the world. Ultimately, it just wants to make money. And I doubt that the vast majority of the people who work at Google are any more ethical or intelligent than the people who work at Microsoft.
Yes, it's search interface is uncluttered by ads and it uses Linux. But it's basically an advertising broker, not a search engine.
Courts do not have to enforce every aspect of a particular act. In fact, they have a duty not to, if enforcement would violate the Constitution. In this particular case, the DMCA would appear to conflict with the right to free speech. And legally, the Constitution is more important than the DMCA or any other act.
In addition, juries (unlike judges) are not obligated to enforce the law, or even the Constitution. They are perfectly entitled to find a defendant not guilty on the grounds that the law is immoral or unethical.
Of course one has to wonder how many spams are from legit businesses that are members of DMA?
Very few right now, because of state anti-spam laws. However, the federal You Can Spam act will make these unenforcable, so many otherwise-legit businesses will soon start spamming.
The one hope is that sensible companies will see that spamming is ultimately self-defeating: For every sucker who buys as a result of a spam, millions more people will decide to boycott the company advertised. Unfortunately, a lot of companies are run by idiots. Prepare for SMTP to be rendered completely useless early next year.
I'm against dangerous driving and child abuse, but charging him with "theft of communications" is an extremely dangerous precendent. Using free Wi-Fi networks is something that a lot of people do, and I've even seen Steve Ballmer say that he does it. Of course, that was when he was trying to sell Windows with Wi-Fi support. He'll change his tune when Palladium arrives.
The propaganda against free Wi-Fi is particularly worrying because most of the complaints aren't about "free as in beer" but about "free as in speech": Many powerful people within the government and corporations are trying to associate anonymous Internet access with evils ranging from pedophilia to terrorism to spam. And the Edmonton Sun article goes even further:
The man used Kazaa, a popular file-sharing web program commonly used to share music, to download the graphic material.
In a study using 12 words associated with child pornography, the U.S. General Accounting Office found that 42% of 1,286 files on the peer-to-peer site contained child porn.
This is obvious BS (isn't "peer-to-peer site" an oxymoron?), but it shows that the RIAA is succeeding in its campaign to get P2P associated with child porn.
Only if Microsoft stops paying them licensing fees. They've been claiming ownership of every operating system since June.
Re:There's No Free Lunch -- Or Free Linux
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 1
CDXPO is just one of the small meetings that spring up around Comdex. McBride is invited because he's guaranteed to say something stupid and controversial that results in heckling, arguments, a large crowd and media attention.
And remember, "Linux is UNIX" has been the core of SCO's case from the beginning. So, this non-compete really doesn't broaden the accusations. All it means is that Novell doesn't have a right to distribute ancient UNIX code, because it sold that right to SCO.
In the extremely unlikely event that someone really has illegally copied UNIX code into Linux, then Novell would have to pay SCO and/or remove the offending code from its distribution, just as Red Hat, etc. would. The only difference between Novell and other Linux distributors is that Novell probably does have access to all of the old UNIX code, so can actually go through it and be absolutely certain that they're not breaking the non-compete.
Novell checking like this doesn't necessarilly help with the main SCO case, because SCO also claims ownership over some code written by IBM. But the non-compete appears only to cover the code that Novell sold to SCO.
It's not about open file formats or lying to get good publicity. XML editing is just one more feature that Microsoft has added to Word. Most people won't use it, just as most people don't use most of the features in Word. It's no different from MS adding HTML editing a few versions ago, although it does seem to be a better implementation.
The native file format in Word is still the same old proprietary.doc, and that isn't changing. Sure, Word users can aim for greater interoperability by saving to XML, but they can do that already by saving to another format like RTF. But few people bother to change the defaults, even though.rtf files are much smaller than.doc and don't carry viruses.
The "email marketing" companies (ie. spammers) do make money, because they sell spamming services (or software, mailing lists, etc.) to other people or companies. But the companies who buy the spamming services (ie. whose products are actually advertised) usually don't.
Genuine (ie. confirmed, double) opt-in email gets a hugh response rate precisely because it targets people who are so interested in a product that they actually signed up to a mailing list about it. Of course, spammers always try to confuse the two.
They do. Atheros's main expertise is in 802.11a, which does use the other band and has more than 100 channels (with about 12 non-overlapping). They've been shipping a dual-chanel chip in that band for more than two years.
If I was a conspiracy theorist (and I am), I'd say that Atheros is deliberately breaking.11b and.11g equipment so that people will upgrade to.11a instead.
One minor nitpick: Reply All isn't due to ignorance about technology. It's usually just arrogance: the belief that What I'm saying is important enough to send to everybody.
Why could the developers of Opera (or any Linux application) not simply distribute the required files along with the application?
Windows developers are restricted from redistributing many DLLs by opyright and abusive EULAs, but the right to redistribute files is supposed to be one of the main benefits of free software.
It's not all professional speculators. Brokers have been making telemarketing calls to pump SCO stock. A lot of people also hear about SCO for the first time on bubblevision, and not knowing anything about the company or Linux, some are tempted to place a bet.
When I first heard that Fox was beating CNN, MSNBC, etc. in ratings, I was horrified. But having actually tried to watch CNN's US shows, I can almost see why. There is no "liberal media": CNN is just Faux News Lite, with some of the more overtly crazy right-wing extremism edited out.
If you want far-right propaganda, Fox gives you it in its purest form, and constantly reminds you that you are wathcing propaganda with its Republican PC language ("homicide bomber") and sarcastic slogan. If you want news without a right-wing bias, you're unlikely to find it on TV.
Google is already in the paid-for search market. The big difference between Google and less honest search engines (epitomized by VeriSign SiteFinder) is that it clearly marks its paid results as advertisements.
Paid-for search is the basis of Google's high valuation. In particular, investors hope that it will become an ad broker, serving text ads to sites all over the Internet. Because text ads are indexable, Google search technology can make them relevant to the content of the site, increasing click-through rate.
Google's extreme valuation is based on predictions that it will control almost online advertising, not on its search service. When it fails to make its numbers, it will begin to offer advertisers increasingly-intrusive ways to attack surfers. At the same time, its search results will be further degraded: Google is already losing the arms race with with link farms, and this is set to get worse.
Eventually, people will start using another search engine. (Probably one that most of us habent heard of yet.) By then, Google's valuation will be in the toilet, and its stock-holders will be happy to sell out to MS. Now, this doesn't mean that Google will die. With every PC defaulting to "MSN Google", a lot of people are still going to use it, and it's search results will sometimes still be quite useful. But the era of Google innovating is about to end. For cool new technology, look to University labs and starving entrepeneurs, not to paper billionaires worried about when their stock options will vest.
As usual, Microsoft will leverage its desktop monopoly. Windows already includes software to rip to WMA (not MP3). Unless you want to install a 3rd-party ripping app (which may not be possible under Longhorn, thanks to NGSCB), you need a player that supports WMA.
NGSCB sounds deliberately obsure, but Microsoft has been pronouning it something like "Ingsoc". If you read 1984 (Warning: huge text file), it all makes sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Wall Street analysts don't really know how a stock is going to perform. They're just guessing, though usually their guesses err on the side of optimism because they want to please the companies they are "analyzing".
This sounds like a rare exception. Maybe his original assessment was honest and his bosses leaned on him to be more friendly to a major client, or maybe some additional information came to light and he changed his mind.
Nearly all the software advertised in spam is counterfeit, so you can forward spam that advertises software to the BSA. Selling illegal copies of software is something that law-enforcement takes more seriously than spam itself.
A few software companies actually ask you to forward them spam that advertises their products. See Symantec's Spamwatch site as an example.
The competing with rental explantion seems like a red herring. A movie is something that many people only want to see once, or at least once every few months or years, whereas a CD is something they'll listen to repeatedly.
I used to rent CDs from my local library, and I'd copy the good tracks to tape or (later) to MP3. I'd also rent movies, but I was never motivated to copy them.
It's actually even worse than that, because there is no centralized opt-out list. Every company or indicidual maintains its own do-not-spam list, so you have to opt-out of each one individually. Like it used to be with telemarketing before the do-not-call list.
But it's great for spammers: They don't have to worry about dealing with individual state laws, so can spam indiscriminately and know they're immune from prosecution and lawsuits. That is, if they're confined to the U.S. Companies with a presnece in Europe or a country that has an anti-spam law won't be able to get away with it.
This isn't an anology: It's exactly the same! The question isn't really abotu the GPL, it's about how copyright law applies to software: Do the copyright holders of an OS have the right to control how drivers are distributed?
The GPL explicitly states that it's intended only to add rights, not take them away. It isn't a signed contract or a dubiously-legal EULA; it's just a limited copyright permission. If you can create drivers for Windows without permission from Microsoft, you can create drivers for Linux without permission from the kernel contributors.
One difference is that creating drivers for Linux may be easier than for Windows, because the source code is available. But arguing that a programmer merely seeing the source code makes the next thing he/she writes somehow a derivative of that code seems contrary to both the spirit of free software and the nature of creativity. It's like saying that novelists shouldn't read books, or that composers should never listen to music.
To comply with the GPL, they need to make source code available. But it's perfectly possible (and legal, IMHO IANAL) to embed the OS in ROM in such a way that it can't easily be changed. Source code availability is still useful, though: It helps developers of apps understand how the system works, makes security audits possible and means that once the device is no longer produced, it'll be easier to make an emulator.
The downside for the phone makers is that their competitors can also take the source code and use it in their phones, but that's the price they pay for using any pre-existing software (free or not) rather than developing something from scratch. The phone makers are better off standardizing on Linux than Windows (no MS tax), and so are DoCoMo and its customers.
Google is just a company. It isn't evil in the sense of SCO or Enron, but neither is it some great force for good in the world. Ultimately, it just wants to make money. And I doubt that the vast majority of the people who work at Google are any more ethical or intelligent than the people who work at Microsoft.
Yes, it's search interface is uncluttered by ads and it uses Linux. But it's basically an
advertising broker, not a search engine.
Courts do not have to enforce every aspect of a particular act. In fact, they have a duty not to, if enforcement would violate the Constitution. In this particular case, the DMCA would appear to conflict with the right to free speech. And legally, the Constitution is more important than the DMCA or any other act.
In addition, juries (unlike judges) are not obligated to enforce the law, or even the Constitution. They are perfectly entitled to find a defendant not guilty on the grounds that the law is immoral or unethical.
Of course one has to wonder how many spams are from legit businesses that are members of DMA?
Very few right now, because of state anti-spam laws. However, the federal You Can Spam act will make these unenforcable, so many otherwise-legit businesses will soon start spamming.
The one hope is that sensible companies will see that spamming is ultimately self-defeating: For every sucker who buys as a result of a spam, millions more people will decide to boycott the company advertised. Unfortunately, a lot of companies are run by idiots. Prepare for SMTP to be rendered completely useless early next year.
I'm against dangerous driving and child abuse, but charging him with "theft of communications" is an extremely dangerous precendent. Using free Wi-Fi networks is something that a lot of people do, and I've even seen Steve Ballmer say that he does it. Of course, that was when he was trying to sell Windows with Wi-Fi support. He'll change his tune when Palladium arrives.
The propaganda against free Wi-Fi is particularly worrying because most of the complaints aren't about "free as in beer" but about "free as in speech": Many powerful people within the government and corporations are trying to associate anonymous Internet access with evils ranging from pedophilia to terrorism to spam. And the Edmonton Sun article goes even further:
The man used Kazaa, a popular file-sharing web program commonly used to share music, to download the graphic material.
In a study using 12 words associated with child pornography, the U.S. General Accounting Office found that 42% of 1,286 files on the peer-to-peer site contained child porn.
This is obvious BS (isn't "peer-to-peer site" an oxymoron?), but it shows that the RIAA is succeeding in its campaign to get P2P associated with child porn.
Only if Microsoft stops paying them licensing fees. They've been claiming ownership of every operating system since June.
CDXPO is just one of the small meetings that spring up around Comdex. McBride is invited because he's guaranteed to say something stupid and controversial that results in heckling, arguments, a large crowd and media attention.
And remember, "Linux is UNIX" has been the core of SCO's case from the beginning. So, this non-compete really doesn't broaden the accusations. All it means is that Novell doesn't have a right to distribute ancient UNIX code, because it sold that right to SCO.
In the extremely unlikely event that someone really has illegally copied UNIX code into Linux, then Novell would have to pay SCO and/or remove the offending code from its distribution, just as Red Hat, etc. would. The only difference between Novell and other Linux distributors is that Novell probably does have access to all of the old UNIX code, so can actually go through it and be absolutely certain that they're not breaking the non-compete.
Novell checking like this doesn't necessarilly help with the main SCO case, because SCO also claims ownership over some code written by IBM. But the non-compete appears only to cover the code that Novell sold to SCO.
It's not about open file formats or lying to get good publicity. XML editing is just one more feature that Microsoft has added to Word. Most people won't use it, just as most people don't use most of the features in Word. It's no different from MS adding HTML editing a few versions ago, although it does seem to be a better implementation.
.doc, and that isn't changing. Sure, Word users can aim for greater interoperability by saving to XML, but they can do that already by saving to another format like RTF. But few people bother to change the defaults, even though .rtf files are much smaller than .doc and don't carry viruses.
The native file format in Word is still the same old proprietary
The "email marketing" companies (ie. spammers) do make money, because they sell spamming services (or software, mailing lists, etc.) to other people or companies. But the companies who buy the spamming services (ie. whose products are actually advertised) usually don't.
Genuine (ie. confirmed, double) opt-in email gets a hugh response rate precisely because it targets people who are so interested in a product that they actually signed up to a mailing list about it. Of course, spammers always try to confuse the two.
They do. Atheros's main expertise is in 802.11a, which does use the other band and has more than 100 channels (with about 12 non-overlapping). They've been shipping a dual-chanel chip in that band for more than two years.
.11b and .11g equipment so that people will upgrade to .11a instead.
If I was a conspiracy theorist (and I am), I'd say that Atheros is deliberately breaking
One minor nitpick: Reply All isn't due to ignorance about technology. It's usually just arrogance: the belief that What I'm saying is important enough to send to everybody.
They've been unloading some too. They traded coffee.com to Peet's, getting a large amount of caffeine (not money) in exchange.
Why could the developers of Opera (or any Linux application) not simply distribute the required files along with the application?
Windows developers are restricted from redistributing many DLLs by opyright and abusive EULAs, but the right to redistribute files is supposed to be one of the main benefits of free software.
It's not all professional speculators. Brokers have been making telemarketing calls to pump SCO stock. A lot of people also hear about SCO for the first time on bubblevision, and not knowing anything about the company or Linux, some are tempted to place a bet.
When I first heard that Fox was beating CNN, MSNBC, etc. in ratings, I was horrified. But having actually tried to watch CNN's US shows, I can almost see why. There is no "liberal media": CNN is just Faux News Lite, with some of the more overtly crazy right-wing extremism edited out.
If you want far-right propaganda, Fox gives you it in its purest form, and constantly reminds you that you are wathcing propaganda with its Republican PC language ("homicide bomber") and sarcastic slogan. If you want news without a right-wing bias, you're unlikely to find it on TV.
Google is already in the paid-for search market. The big difference between Google and less honest search engines (epitomized by VeriSign SiteFinder) is that it clearly marks its paid results as advertisements.
Paid-for search is the basis of Google's high valuation. In particular, investors hope that it will become an ad broker, serving text ads to sites all over the Internet. Because text ads are indexable, Google search technology can make them relevant to the content of the site, increasing click-through rate.
Google's extreme valuation is based on predictions that it will control almost online advertising, not on its search service. When it fails to make its numbers, it will begin to offer advertisers increasingly-intrusive ways to attack surfers. At the same time, its search results will be further degraded: Google is already losing the arms race with with link farms, and this is set to get worse.
Eventually, people will start using another search engine. (Probably one that most of us habent heard of yet.) By then, Google's valuation will be in the toilet, and its stock-holders will be happy to sell out to MS. Now, this doesn't mean that Google will die. With every PC defaulting to "MSN Google", a lot of people are still going to use it, and it's search results will sometimes still be quite useful. But the era of Google innovating is about to end. For cool new technology, look to University labs and starving entrepeneurs, not to paper billionaires worried about when their stock options will vest.
As usual, Microsoft will leverage its desktop monopoly. Windows already includes software to rip to WMA (not MP3). Unless you want to install a 3rd-party ripping app (which may not be possible under Longhorn, thanks to NGSCB), you need a player that supports WMA.
NGSCB sounds deliberately obsure, but Microsoft has been pronouning it something like "Ingsoc". If you read 1984 (Warning: huge text file), it all makes sense.