Asking people to sign a contract before they place a bet puts people off even more. This is part of what the whole deregulation in the UK is about: At present, the law says that all casinos need to be private members' clubs, which people need to sign up to join. There's even a mandatory 24-hour waiting period between joining and actually gambling, to prevent casinos taking advantage of drunk people. Also, casinos aren't allowed to offer slot machines (which can be found in almost every pub and video arcade), sports betting and several other games.
Obviously, the casinos don't like any of these rules. But they don't really want true deregulation either, let alone the player-friendly laws in Atlantic City. They want the same kind of situation as in Las Vegas, where using a roulette computer is a felony and casinos can refuse to pay winners for any reason. (Though it's now technically illegal for Vegas casinos to have their security guards beat people up, the police and the courts generally side with the casinos in any dispute.)
Casinos make huge profits from card counting, thanks to the millions of players attracted to Blackjack because it can theoretically be beaten. Most aren't good enough at card counting to really gain an edge over a casino, or don't have the time and bankroll. The advantage is only stastistical and can take many hundreds of hands to show up, so people without deep pockets are easily bankrupted by a run of bad luck.
In recent years, card counting has also given the casinos an excuse to change the rules of Blackjack in ways that favor the house against all players, not just card counters (eg. hit soft 17, no surrender.) In a lot of casinos, you need to be a very skilled card counter just to reduce Blackjack's house edge to the same as Craps' (a no-skill game that can be played while taking full advantage of the free alcohol), let alone actually reverse it.
You're right, but the articles probably won't be ad-less. Google's real mission is advertising, so they'll use the exact same text ad infrastructure as adsense, adwords, etc.
It'll be interesting to see how news sites react. The value of AP content to them will presumably go down, as it will no longer be attracting Google clicks. (At least, I hope Google News will stop returning 200 identical hits that link to the exact same syndicated story....)
Some might also look to strike similar deals with Google, though I think most see Google more as a competitor than customer. (The AP has always been about selling content, whereas most media companies are about selling ads.)
The FSF's reasoning seems to be that copyright law prohibits you from *modifying* a work without permission (regardless of whether you distribute it or not), not that EULAs are valid or that offering a Web service counts as distribution. So, the Web services clause would only apply to you if you changed a program, not if you simply used it to run a Web server.
There's a very big loophole here, because modifying isn't as "viral" as copying: A Web company could just outsource GPL programming to someone else, so that technically it isn't making any modifications (or copying, distributing, etc.) and doesn't need to accept the license.
This is probably good legal advice, but it can be a problem. The corporation's first step will be to contact a debt collector, who will then start to stalk you and/or libel you to the credit reporting agencies.
The corporation won't win if they actually sue for money that you don't owe them, but they can still harass you and destroy your credit. In theory, you can sue them (and the debt collectors, and the credit agencies), but for many people that's about as realistic as standing up to the RIAA.
Unless you're actually willing to go to court, it's better to make them admit that you don't owe them anything or (if that isn't possible) have a lawyer send them a letter. At the very least, write them a threatening letter yourself quoting the releveant laws, cc the FTC and any other relevant state/federal regulatory agencies, and send it via courier or certifed/signed-for mail.
Most AV apps pop up a warning whenever they detect a virus. They like to remind you that they're doing their job.
More than once, Symantec AV has told me that it's detected and neytralized a Web page with the WMF vulnerability. I guess that's interesting to know, even though my system was fully patched so I wouldn't have been vulnerable anyway. It's also told me that my PC was being probed by hacking scripts, though (again) I was already protected through patches and not having the necessary ports open.
The real question is, how do any of us know that we're not already infected by a super-devious rootkit that no AV apps recognize?
Haven't they already made a CGI trailer, showing a giant robot on Mars? It doesn't show very much (you can't identify which TF it is), but it's still CGI.
I loved the Transformers, but I can't really get excited about the voice actors (even if they could resurrect Orson Welles...). They need to get Simon Furman involved.
This is one reason why Google is promoting Firefox so aggressively. It's also why Google has already complained to the DOJ about MS's intentions in the online ad market.
IE already has a popup blocker (admittedly, only after every other browser and toolbar offered one first), so a text-ad blocker isn't too different. MS would white-list their *own* ads, of course, so that only Google's would be blocked. I expect there'd be some option in the preferences menu to white-list Google sites too, but who would bother wanting to see more ads?
Enderle appears to be ignorant of Microsoft history, despite his claimed 20-year record. The other Microsoft founder left many years ago (long before Gates).
Ballmer was just an employee. Gates supposedly promoted him because he was buying stock while other insiders were selling it, demonstrating his faith in the company (and making him very rich, as this was back when MS was much smaller).
It used to be that samples would be destroyed and data erased if the police didn't charge you or you were acquitted. (You even had the right to go to the polie station with your lawyer and see them being physically destroyed.)
They still do this with fingerprints, but *not* with DNA. Now, even if you're provably innocent and only arrested due to police error, prejudice, etc., they still keep your DNA profile in a database. And they keep the actual samples too, so that they can get a reading of your complete genome when DNA sequencing techniques improve.
If they install the business edition, they won't be able to play high-definition video in MS's proprietary DRM format.
Unlike with XP, the home version isn't just the business version with some newtorking functions taken out. It has some extra (DRM-crippled) multimedia stuff that businesses don't get.
They can even un-sign drivers through a security update. So if you happen to be using the same kind of hardware as DVD Jon or anyone else MS doesn't like, it might suddenly stop working.
There are two big problems with the patent system. There are patent trolls that do nothing except sue real companies over trivial or overly-broad patents. Then there are patent cartels, where large corporations negotiate cross-licensing agreements to lock out smaller competitors (and open-source, in the case of software patents).
The large companies like Microsoft want to eliminate patent trolls, but (obviously) not patent cartels. As an added bonus, their reforms will also remove any remaining protection that patents offer to small companies or lone inventors who really have invented something.
The same reasoning would mean that you can't release a hash of anything without getting the copyright holder's permission. The GPL is just a special case because permission is dependent on releasing the source.
There wouldn't normally be a reason to distribute hashes without whatever is being signed or checksummed, so I guess this isn't a big problem. But there are some situations where it might be, like antivirus signature files.
Linux is the most famous GPL project, but there's no reason that GPL v3 can't survive without it. It took a long time for the original GPL to be adopted by large numbers of developers, so why should v3 be any different? I expect it'll be embraced by people like DVD Jon, writing new applications that we haven't dreamed up yet.
I don't mean to denigrate Linux, or the work of Linus and the kernel developers. He may even have made the right decision in sticking with v2, as v3 doesn't exist yet, and some of commercial distros might try to fork the kernel if he changed the license. (Everyone who uses Linux has an absolute right to release a v2 fork, and that can't be taken away by Linus or RMS.) But the GPL is more than just Linux.
So put the phone in a Farday cage, so that it looks like it's entered a dead zone. Then turn it off, so that the battery is saved but it won't be able to broadcast the "I'm being switched off" message.
Do the same in reverse when you need to use the phone: Switch it on before taking it out of the cage.
This would work, but they'd still be able to track you when you do switch it on and check for messages. You'd need a service that also let you check voicemail through another phone or a Web browser
Local newspapers already have name recognition, so they could do something like Craigslist to save their classified ad business. It's too late for the SF Bay Area, but not for the other areas that Craigslist hasn't opened in yet.
Their problem is that Craiglist doesn't make anything like as much money as the newspapers got from print ads. The fees from job (and now housing) ads are enough to make Craig and his colleagues rich, but not enough to support big companies with thousands of full-time employees.
Back in the 1980s, most people still believed the propaganda that the Shuttle would make space flight routine. It was seen as the first step towards colonization of the Universe.
By three years ago, everyone knew that the Shuttle was an expensive white elephant. It was already due to be retired, so the tragedy had much less impact. Feynman had even warned that, even with the post-Challenger improvements, about 1in 100 shuttle flights would end in disaster.
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Asking people to sign a contract before they place a bet puts people off even more. This is part of what the whole deregulation in the UK is about: At present, the law says that all casinos need to be private members' clubs, which people need to sign up to join. There's even a mandatory 24-hour waiting period between joining and actually gambling, to prevent casinos taking advantage of drunk people. Also, casinos aren't allowed to offer slot machines (which can be found in almost every pub and video arcade), sports betting and several other games.
Obviously, the casinos don't like any of these rules. But they don't really want true deregulation either, let alone the player-friendly laws in Atlantic City. They want the same kind of situation as in Las Vegas, where using a roulette computer is a felony and casinos can refuse to pay winners for any reason. (Though it's now technically illegal for Vegas casinos to have their security guards beat people up, the police and the courts generally side with the casinos in any dispute.)
Casinos make huge profits from card counting, thanks to the millions of players attracted to Blackjack because it can theoretically be beaten. Most aren't good enough at card counting to really gain an edge over a casino, or don't have the time and bankroll. The advantage is only stastistical and can take many hundreds of hands to show up, so people without deep pockets are easily bankrupted by a run of bad luck.
In recent years, card counting has also given the casinos an excuse to change the rules of Blackjack in ways that favor the house against all players, not just card counters (eg. hit soft 17, no surrender.) In a lot of casinos, you need to be a very skilled card counter just to reduce Blackjack's house edge to the same as Craps' (a no-skill game that can be played while taking full advantage of the free alcohol), let alone actually reverse it.
I used to keep spare AA batteries in my pockets, alongside coins and keys. I learned a very painful lesson not to do that anymore.
But were the coffee houses that opened the APs liable, either in civil or criminal court?
This is definitely a question that needs to be put to the lawyers.
You're right, but the articles probably won't be ad-less. Google's real mission is advertising, so they'll use the exact same text ad infrastructure as adsense, adwords, etc.
It'll be interesting to see how news sites react. The value of AP content to them will presumably go down, as it will no longer be attracting Google clicks. (At least, I hope Google News will stop returning 200 identical hits that link to the exact same syndicated story....)
Some might also look to strike similar deals with Google, though I think most see Google more as a competitor than customer. (The AP has always been about selling content, whereas most media companies are about selling ads.)
The FSF's reasoning seems to be that copyright law prohibits you from *modifying* a work without permission (regardless of whether you distribute it or not), not that EULAs are valid or that offering a Web service counts as distribution. So, the Web services clause would only apply to you if you changed a program, not if you simply used it to run a Web server.
There's a very big loophole here, because modifying isn't as "viral" as copying: A Web company could just outsource GPL programming to someone else, so that technically it isn't making any modifications (or copying, distributing, etc.) and doesn't need to accept the license.
This is probably good legal advice, but it can be a problem. The corporation's first step will be to contact a debt collector, who will then start to stalk you and/or libel you to the credit reporting agencies.
The corporation won't win if they actually sue for money that you don't owe them, but they can still harass you and destroy your credit. In theory, you can sue them (and the debt collectors, and the credit agencies), but for many people that's about as realistic as standing up to the RIAA.
Unless you're actually willing to go to court, it's better to make them admit that you don't owe them anything or (if that isn't possible) have a lawyer send them a letter. At the very least, write them a threatening letter yourself quoting the releveant laws, cc the FTC and any other relevant state/federal regulatory agencies, and send it via courier or certifed/signed-for mail.
Most AV apps pop up a warning whenever they detect a virus. They like to remind you that they're doing their job.
More than once, Symantec AV has told me that it's detected and neytralized a Web page with the WMF vulnerability. I guess that's interesting to know, even though my system was fully patched so I wouldn't have been vulnerable anyway. It's also told me that my PC was being probed by hacking scripts, though (again) I was already protected through patches and not having the necessary ports open.
The real question is, how do any of us know that we're not already infected by a super-devious rootkit that no AV apps recognize?
Haven't they already made a CGI trailer, showing a giant robot on Mars? It doesn't show very much (you can't identify which TF it is), but it's still CGI.
I loved the Transformers, but I can't really get excited about the voice actors (even if they could resurrect Orson Welles...). They need to get Simon Furman involved.
This is one reason why Google is promoting Firefox so aggressively. It's also why Google has already complained to the DOJ about MS's intentions in the online ad market.
IE already has a popup blocker (admittedly, only after every other browser and toolbar offered one first), so a text-ad blocker isn't too different. MS would white-list their *own* ads, of course, so that only Google's would be blocked. I expect there'd be some option in the preferences menu to white-list Google sites too, but who would bother wanting to see more ads?
Enderle appears to be ignorant of Microsoft history, despite his claimed 20-year record. The other Microsoft founder left many years ago (long before Gates).
Ballmer was just an employee. Gates supposedly promoted him because he was buying stock while other insiders were selling it, demonstrating his faith in the company (and making him very rich, as this was back when MS was much smaller).
They said the same thing about the illegal phone tapping: that it was just for international calls. Now we learn that it's actually for all calls.
Texans are already being spied on by their government, as are all Americans.
The case is about a California state law, so it's probably not that useful in Chicago. (But it's still a good thing, of course.)
It used to be that samples would be destroyed and data erased if the police didn't charge you or you were acquitted. (You even had the right to go to the polie station with your lawyer and see them being physically destroyed.)
They still do this with fingerprints, but *not* with DNA. Now, even if you're provably innocent and only arrested due to police error, prejudice, etc., they still keep your DNA profile in a database. And they keep the actual samples too, so that they can get a reading of your complete genome when DNA sequencing techniques improve.
If they install the business edition, they won't be able to play high-definition video in MS's proprietary DRM format.
Unlike with XP, the home version isn't just the business version with some newtorking functions taken out. It has some extra (DRM-crippled) multimedia stuff that businesses don't get.
The business version doesn't need to include that. The consumer version does.
They can even un-sign drivers through a security update. So if you happen to be using the same kind of hardware as DVD Jon or anyone else MS doesn't like, it might suddenly stop working.
There are two big problems with the patent system. There are patent trolls that do nothing except sue real companies over trivial or overly-broad patents. Then there are patent cartels, where large corporations negotiate cross-licensing agreements to lock out smaller competitors (and open-source, in the case of software patents).
The large companies like Microsoft want to eliminate patent trolls, but (obviously) not patent cartels. As an added bonus, their reforms will also remove any remaining protection that patents offer to small companies or lone inventors who really have invented something.
The same reasoning would mean that you can't release a hash of anything without getting the copyright holder's permission. The GPL is just a special case because permission is dependent on releasing the source.
There wouldn't normally be a reason to distribute hashes without whatever is being signed or checksummed, so I guess this isn't a big problem. But there are some situations where it might be, like antivirus signature files.
Linux is the most famous GPL project, but there's no reason that GPL v3 can't survive without it. It took a long time for the original GPL to be adopted by large numbers of developers, so why should v3 be any different? I expect it'll be embraced by people like DVD Jon, writing new applications that we haven't dreamed up yet.
I don't mean to denigrate Linux, or the work of Linus and the kernel developers. He may even have made the right decision in sticking with v2, as v3 doesn't exist yet, and some of commercial distros might try to fork the kernel if he changed the license. (Everyone who uses Linux has an absolute right to release a v2 fork, and that can't be taken away by Linus or RMS.) But the GPL is more than just Linux.
So put the phone in a Farday cage, so that it looks like it's entered a dead zone. Then turn it off, so that the battery is saved but it won't be able to broadcast the "I'm being switched off" message.
Do the same in reverse when you need to use the phone: Switch it on before taking it out of the cage.
This would work, but they'd still be able to track you when you do switch it on and check for messages. You'd need a service that also let you check voicemail through another phone or a Web browser
Local newspapers already have name recognition, so they could do something like Craigslist to save their classified ad business. It's too late for the SF Bay Area, but not for the other areas that Craigslist hasn't opened in yet.
Their problem is that Craiglist doesn't make anything like as much money as the newspapers got from print ads. The fees from job (and now housing) ads are enough to make Craig and his colleagues rich, but not enough to support big companies with thousands of full-time employees.
Google redirects visitors based on the user's IP address: Go to Google.com in France, and you get to Google.fr. I imagine it's the same in China.
Back in the 1980s, most people still believed the propaganda that the Shuttle would make space flight routine. It was seen as the first step towards colonization of the Universe.
By three years ago, everyone knew that the Shuttle was an expensive white elephant. It was already due to be retired, so the tragedy had much less impact. Feynman had even warned that, even with the post-Challenger improvements, about 1in 100 shuttle flights would end in disaster.