The Californian case is interesting on a number of levels, but if that decision was appealed to the federal circuit I'd give it a life span of about 15 minutes.
I have had bank staff refuse to talk to me when I've informed them the call is being recorded, DESPITE their own phone system telling me that they may record calls - or put me through to their supervisor.
It's made for interesting discussions with the local bank manager. The last time was before Youtube got popular or I'd have put the results online.
Criminal charges under 2-party laws related to "Monicagate" were thrown out(*) because it turned out the call in question was across state lines and federal one-party laws applied.
(*) The woman who recorded Monica admitting sexual activity with Bill was prosecuted by the state AG. The case was thrown out because the court ruled that because it was an interstate call, federal courts had jurisdiction - and because federal law is one-party, there was no case to answer.
"For instance, if someone in a "one party notice" receives a phone call from someone in a "two party notice" state, and has an app on their phone that automatically records all calls... what happens? Which set of laws apply?"
Currently: Federal law (one party rule)
"There either needs to be a federal law establishing which state's laws apply so that we all know once and for all, or (my preference since it's simpler) a federal law unifying all the state laws."
Funnily enough the FCC and most one-party states agree. The two party states tend to have those laws to protect corrupt officials, so they also tend to resist this notion.
The driving issue with most 2 party laws is to prevent employers secretly recording calls without notifying the callcentre operative or the caller, or to allow those in power to prevent damaging items being publicised. This makes warnings necessary even if the callcentre operative is pushing the record button.
Warnings are usually necessary in one party jurisdictions because the callcentre operative isn't operating the recorder. If either party to the call is operating the recording device then notification isn't needed.
In other parts of the world (eg: UK), one party recording is perfectly legal for personal use, but the other party must be informed if the recording will be circulated (they do not have to consent, merely be informed and they cannot demand that they not be recorded).
For courtroom use, unless the non-recording party has been informed of the recording, a transcript must be submitted in the first instance and the recording itself can only be introduced as evidence if the transcript is disputed - note that phone taps are NOT allowed to be used as evidence in UK courtrooms.
In practice, "secret recordings" regularly get aired on TV and it is extremely difficult for the businesses concerned to prevent them without looking like bigger asshats than they already are. (In marginal cases the call will be revoiced by actors, which is still legal as long as they stick to the transcript)
If the conversation is interstate then single party laws apply.
2-party laws are generally abusive and I'll bet that Comcast themselves were recording the call. I've seen a number of companies conveniently "lose" their records when it suits them - and a judge haul one up when they then proceeded to produce recordings older than the one which had been "lost"
"Either way, the court might reasonably cure Ximpleware's problem by affirming the existence of a patent license to everyone legitimately using the code under the GPL."
There are plenty of parts of GPL which are patent encumbered. It's perfectly possible to release patented stuff under GPL as long as a patent license is bundled - and the patent license can be worded to only be valid whilst use of the software is GPL-compliant.
Issues come when the holder of the patent is not the same entity as the author of the software and is not entitled to issue a patent license. That's when rewrites are needed.
As others have said, the issue here is that Company A sued Company B and during discovery it was discovered that Company C's work had been illegally incorporated into the product in dispute.
Given the "logic" that the MAFIAA use, if the value of the breach is over $50k, criminal charges could be filed. Some software companies would try and use that logic too.
"BSD license removes most of these legal acrobatics."
Yes, and leaves 3rd parties free to modify my code, call it their own and claim copyright on it, or release binary-only versions.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but the BSD model's main advantage is to vendors who want to benefit off others work whilst not contributing back to the ecosystem.
To be honest I'm surprised that BSD isn't more widespread in embedded systems, but the fact that so many use linux means that the GPL must have something going for it on the vendor side.
It needs reliable power and good transportation links.
Batteries may not care about where the electricity comes from but the factory itself needs to be close to either the raw materials or the point of consumption.
Given the quality control issues inherent in packing up this kind of "stuff", the only humans in the loop are likely to be pushing a couple of buttons at eech end of the shift.
The only way it can be economic is to be heavily automated. Expecting it to be a jobs lifeline is "rather optimistic"
Alvin Toffler's age of technocrats is a bit late, but it's looming large now.
Funnily enough I remember a similar impasse about 30 years ago in New Zealand
The music labels wanted TV stations to pay royalties for broadcasting top40 countdown and other music programs.
The TV stations all responded by shutting down their music programs. Music sales plummetted.
5 months later, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" aired - the first music video on TV for that entire period - and it _only_ aired because the music companies were desperate enough to buy prime time advertising space to play it.
Music companies leanred their lesson over that one - for about 15 minutes. the TV companies resumed their music shows, royalty free - and a few years later the music companies tried again.
Ad blockers exist because of noxious adverts (ESPECIALLY animated ones. Noisy flash-based ads are a fast way of getting me to move on quickly (never to return) and I doubt I'm the only one.). Putting them on the same server as the content won't slow Adblock Pro down by more than a couple of seconds while I tune the frames to kill.
Keep the adverts static and don't annoy me with them. Your content is hardly ever unique, so why should I bother with you if there's a paywall?
Murketers just "don't get it", but the fact that 90% of ad campaigns fail shows it's hardly a new phenomenon.
Going back 25 years again - the company I owned ran a 3 month newspaper campaign - it cost us about $2500 and picked up 3 extra sales.
We got 200 extra sales with 1 afternoon of local AOR station radio advertising that cost about $80
We also discovered that a single $5 ad in the classified of the "serious" papers got more sales than a 1/4 page ad in the front 4 pages or back 3 pages of the "popular" ones (Each classified ad would pick up about 20 sales)
Newpapers were dying as a medium long before the Internet came along - TV did most of the damage already.
"After all, newspapers have NEVER made a dime on their print issues, except via advertising."
The price of a newspaper has traditionally reflected the cost of the actual paper it contained. (it also discourages littering - people are more careful with things they pay for)
Which makes the issue of charging extra for online access somewhat odd.
25 years ago, most "journalism" in newspapers I was dealing with consisted of regurgiutating reuters word-for-word, or putting a reporter's name on press releases.
By comparison the Internet is a revelation. Not just because you can usually find reserach into what's in the news, but because you can also see behind the press releases and find what's being "spun"
To steal a line about Usenet: it's like watching a herd of performing elephants at times - capable of bombarding you with mindboggling amounts of excrement at times, but still a wonderous thing to behold.
People have been doing this on aircraft for years. If you run a wifi scanner you'll usually see one AP broadcasting itself as "free public Wifi" - and by the end of the flight most of the other nodes around the cabin will be broadcasting the same SSID.
Aircraft operators generally don't pay per Mb. They buy committed bandwidth and if you fill it with torrents, noone on the plain is going to be happy about their slow connection.
The last time I flew, the wifi setup was clearly filtered, as I couldn't even SSH out. Web/email worked but not much else.
If Japan wants to do this, they'll have to do something about the (un)reliability of their rockets and probes.
The track record so far isn't exactly wonderful and indications are that the problems are cultural rather than technical (If you're brought up not to question authority, you don't interrupt your superior when he's making a mistake - even if that mistake might be crashing an aircraft, or putting a flawed rocket motor design together.)
A large part of why Harriers proved so effective in dogfights was that they could swing their nozzles around to provide reverse thrust in midair, changing speed from 500mph to zero very quickly, without stalling....At which point the A4 skyhawk (fitted with 1960s avionics) on your tail would lumber past and you could pick it off with your air to air missle or even the cannon.
If you try that in a F35B you'll rip the airframe apart.
Slashdot Mirror
ITYM "In my country" if you happen to reside in the USA.
The Californian case is interesting on a number of levels, but if that decision was appealed to the federal circuit I'd give it a life span of about 15 minutes.
That gets even more interesting.
I have had offshore callcentre staff try to tell me that my recording the call is criminal under their local laws.
Indian and Filipino staff are particularly prone to this kind of wildeyed claim (It's not illegal in either country in any case)
The answer to that is "Well, diddums. Sue me. Meantime I'm sending a copy of this recording to the company head office"
I have had bank staff refuse to talk to me when I've informed them the call is being recorded, DESPITE their own phone system telling me that they may record calls - or put me through to their supervisor.
It's made for interesting discussions with the local bank manager. The last time was before Youtube got popular or I'd have put the results online.
It does.
Criminal charges under 2-party laws related to "Monicagate" were thrown out(*) because it turned out the call in question was across state lines and federal one-party laws applied.
(*) The woman who recorded Monica admitting sexual activity with Bill was prosecuted by the state AG. The case was thrown out because the court ruled that because it was an interstate call, federal courts had jurisdiction - and because federal law is one-party, there was no case to answer.
"For instance, if someone in a "one party notice" receives a phone call from someone in a "two party notice" state, and has an app on their phone that automatically records all calls... what happens? Which set of laws apply?"
Currently: Federal law (one party rule)
"There either needs to be a federal law establishing which state's laws apply so that we all know once and for all, or (my preference since it's simpler) a federal law unifying all the state laws."
Funnily enough the FCC and most one-party states agree. The two party states tend to have those laws to protect corrupt officials, so they also tend to resist this notion.
The driving issue with most 2 party laws is to prevent employers secretly recording calls without notifying the callcentre operative or the caller, or to allow those in power to prevent damaging items being publicised. This makes warnings necessary even if the callcentre operative is pushing the record button.
Warnings are usually necessary in one party jurisdictions because the callcentre operative isn't operating the recorder. If either party to the call is operating the recording device then notification isn't needed.
In other parts of the world (eg: UK), one party recording is perfectly legal for personal use, but the other party must be informed if the recording will be circulated (they do not have to consent, merely be informed and they cannot demand that they not be recorded).
For courtroom use, unless the non-recording party has been informed of the recording, a transcript must be submitted in the first instance and the recording itself can only be introduced as evidence if the transcript is disputed - note that phone taps are NOT allowed to be used as evidence in UK courtrooms.
In practice, "secret recordings" regularly get aired on TV and it is extremely difficult for the businesses concerned to prevent them without looking like bigger asshats than they already are. (In marginal cases the call will be revoiced by actors, which is still legal as long as they stick to the transcript)
If the conversation is interstate then single party laws apply.
2-party laws are generally abusive and I'll bet that Comcast themselves were recording the call. I've seen a number of companies conveniently "lose" their records when it suits them - and a judge haul one up when they then proceeded to produce recordings older than the one which had been "lost"
"Either way, the court might reasonably cure Ximpleware's problem by affirming the existence of a patent license to everyone legitimately using the code under the GPL."
There are plenty of parts of GPL which are patent encumbered. It's perfectly possible to release patented stuff under GPL as long as a patent license is bundled - and the patent license can be worded to only be valid whilst use of the software is GPL-compliant.
Issues come when the holder of the patent is not the same entity as the author of the software and is not entitled to issue a patent license. That's when rewrites are needed.
As others have said, the issue here is that Company A sued Company B and during discovery it was discovered that Company C's work had been illegally incorporated into the product in dispute.
Given the "logic" that the MAFIAA use, if the value of the breach is over $50k, criminal charges could be filed. Some software companies would try and use that logic too.
"BSD license removes most of these legal acrobatics."
Yes, and leaves 3rd parties free to modify my code, call it their own and claim copyright on it, or release binary-only versions.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but the BSD model's main advantage is to vendors who want to benefit off others work whilst not contributing back to the ecosystem.
To be honest I'm surprised that BSD isn't more widespread in embedded systems, but the fact that so many use linux means that the GPL must have something going for it on the vendor side.
1: There are no comparable AMD CPUs to i7-anything.
2: Where AMD do compete (down at i5 level) they're significantly cheaper.
3: Horses for courses. Unless you've been optimising for TSX it doesn't matter.
It needs reliable power and good transportation links.
Batteries may not care about where the electricity comes from but the factory itself needs to be close to either the raw materials or the point of consumption.
Given the quality control issues inherent in packing up this kind of "stuff", the only humans in the loop are likely to be pushing a couple of buttons at eech end of the shift.
The only way it can be economic is to be heavily automated. Expecting it to be a jobs lifeline is "rather optimistic"
Alvin Toffler's age of technocrats is a bit late, but it's looming large now.
Funnily enough I remember a similar impasse about 30 years ago in New Zealand
The music labels wanted TV stations to pay royalties for broadcasting top40 countdown and other music programs.
The TV stations all responded by shutting down their music programs. Music sales plummetted.
5 months later, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" aired - the first music video on TV for that entire period - and it _only_ aired because the music companies were desperate enough to buy prime time advertising space to play it.
Music companies leanred their lesson over that one - for about 15 minutes. the TV companies resumed their music shows, royalty free - and a few years later the music companies tried again.
Ad blockers exist because of noxious adverts (ESPECIALLY animated ones. Noisy flash-based ads are a fast way of getting me to move on quickly (never to return) and I doubt I'm the only one.). Putting them on the same server as the content won't slow Adblock Pro down by more than a couple of seconds while I tune the frames to kill.
Keep the adverts static and don't annoy me with them. Your content is hardly ever unique, so why should I bother with you if there's a paywall?
Murketers just "don't get it", but the fact that 90% of ad campaigns fail shows it's hardly a new phenomenon.
"Unless all the ads are just for show"
Going back 25 years again - the company I owned ran a 3 month newspaper campaign - it cost us about $2500 and picked up 3 extra sales.
We got 200 extra sales with 1 afternoon of local AOR station radio advertising that cost about $80
We also discovered that a single $5 ad in the classified of the "serious" papers got more sales than a 1/4 page ad in the front 4 pages or back 3 pages of the "popular" ones (Each classified ad would pick up about 20 sales)
Newpapers were dying as a medium long before the Internet came along - TV did most of the damage already.
"After all, newspapers have NEVER made a dime on their print issues, except via advertising."
The price of a newspaper has traditionally reflected the cost of the actual paper it contained. (it also discourages littering - people are more careful with things they pay for)
Which makes the issue of charging extra for online access somewhat odd.
25 years ago, most "journalism" in newspapers I was dealing with consisted of regurgiutating reuters word-for-word, or putting a reporter's name on press releases.
By comparison the Internet is a revelation. Not just because you can usually find reserach into what's in the news, but because you can also see behind the press releases and find what's being "spun"
To steal a line about Usenet: it's like watching a herd of performing elephants at times - capable of bombarding you with mindboggling amounts of excrement at times, but still a wonderous thing to behold.
People have been doing this on aircraft for years. If you run a wifi scanner you'll usually see one AP broadcasting itself as "free public Wifi" - and by the end of the flight most of the other nodes around the cabin will be broadcasting the same SSID.
Aircraft operators generally don't pay per Mb. They buy committed bandwidth and if you fill it with torrents, noone on the plain is going to be happy about their slow connection.
The last time I flew, the wifi setup was clearly filtered, as I couldn't even SSH out. Web/email worked but not much else.
You can guarantee that if this starts happening over EU skies, the "special holding area"(*) at Stansted will start seeing a lot more visitors.
(*) That's the one with large berms on both sides of the aircraft to deflect explosions, and said berms have a large number of gun portals on them.
If Japan wants to do this, they'll have to do something about the (un)reliability of their rockets and probes.
The track record so far isn't exactly wonderful and indications are that the problems are cultural rather than technical (If you're brought up not to question authority, you don't interrupt your superior when he's making a mistake - even if that mistake might be crashing an aircraft, or putting a flawed rocket motor design together.)
"The naysayers were proven wrong,"
A large part of why Harriers proved so effective in dogfights was that they could swing their nozzles around to provide reverse thrust in midair, changing speed from 500mph to zero very quickly, without stalling. ...At which point the A4 skyhawk (fitted with 1960s avionics) on your tail would lumber past and you could pick it off with your air to air missle or even the cannon.
If you try that in a F35B you'll rip the airframe apart.
The F35 doesn't carry enough ordanance to take on more than a couple of opposing aircraft.
"The F-35 is not an air superiority craft."
That's correct. It's supposed to be the _CHEAP_ folllowup when the F22s have done their job.
Even if everything worked, it was too expensive even before the costs started spiralling.