I understand that Elcomsoft is asserting Fifth and First Amendment defenses.
The Constitution distinguishes betweeen the rights of citizens and the rights of persons, which term includes aliens as well as domestic and foreign corporations. The Fifth Amendment applies to persons, including Elcomsoft and its Russian employees.
It is unclear what rights aliens or foreign corporations have under the First Amendment, but it's irrelevant because the argument would be that the DMCA violates the First Amendment rights of US citizens who have constitutionally protected uses for Elcomsoft's product.
Is there any way of slowing down a solar-sail-propelled vessel? (Would a gravity "slingshot" suffice? I am probably using that term incorrectly.) In other words, what do you do if you've got a local destination, and you're not just going out past the heliopause to infinity and beyond?
(This is a serious question, or at least I think it is.)
Another example is David Eggers' McSweeney's Books, which is basically the publishing equivalent of an independent record label. This article relates that McSweeney's can do a very good looking hardcover (better than most of what you see at B&N or Borders) for $2.80/copy. Makes you think.
Exactly how do you imagine one would go about selling marijuana "online"? At some point, even the most stoned customer would demand a delivery of tangible product.
It's always been my dream to figure out how to factor big, big numbers. But I always pondered, if I did figure it out, would I tell? ie, How many companies/gov'ts would kill for that exclusive info?
This is the premise for what could be the most boring thriller ever sold at an airport newsstand.
Aaaahhhh! An infinite regress of monitoring problems! Run for the hills!
Seriously, 19 centuries after Juvenal -- the Roman satiric poet who remarked, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, or "Who watches the watchmen?" -- it is no longer the height of originality to point out that any scheme for exercise of regulatory authority will require some control on the regulator's power. If you have some interesting comment to make about the form that control should take, great. Otherwise, it would save time if people would just say "Juvenal's Remark" instead of spelling out at length what is obvious.
The company I contract to has a permanent retention policy. We have full backups back to the beginning of the existence of the company.
No, they don't. They only think they do, unless there is nothing in the trash each night each night except coffee cups, sandwich wrappers and pencil shavings, which I can't imagine is actually the case.
The reason a company with nothing to hide should nevertheless have a document retention policy is because there are exactly two alternatives: (1)keep every document until the heat death of the universe, or (2)dispose of documents on an ad hoc basis (that is, whenever the mood strikes you). The first alternative is just not feasible. The second opens the door to inferences of bad faith, because you'll never be able to explain at some later date why you retained some documents and not others, which purportedly might have been incriminating.
A document retention policy might also be advisable for the additional reason that it's not a good idea to have documents lying around when both the authors and recipients are long gone from the company (perhaps even deceased), and no one at the company understands what the documents mean or why they were prepared. At that point, there's no benefit to retaining the documents: they can serve only as potential ammunition for an adversary in a lawsuit. An adversary can draw erroneous inferences even from innocently prepared documents, and if you can't put the author on the witness stand to say, "That's not what I meant," what do you do?
(Note that so-called "ancient" documents -- which in federal court means documents more than 20 years old, seeFed. R. Evid. 803(16) -- are ordinarily admissible as evidence just like testimony from an eyewitness even though they are hearsay.)
(Incidentally, if you see that FOO-PAC gave a chunk of money to this candidate, don't jump to any conclusions before you see what sums that PAC gave to other candidates. Some PACs spread around a lot of money but devote the really big bucks to just a few candidates.)
You can always go to his campaign web site and make a contribution -- it's here.
(Oddly, for such a tech-savvy guy, he's not set up for secure credit-card contributions over the internet; most campaign web sites are. I usually send amounts totalling $1-2K a year to various campaigns -- usually because their opponent annoys me -- and I almost always contribute by CC.)
Giving away the software of failed companies could turn every corporate failure into a disaster for everyone else.
I'm probably taking this out of context, but this is a silly thing to say: [snip]
Agreed, also because if the software has any market value, it can't be given away by a failed company -- the software product will be sold to pay off creditors.
This makes perfect sense, especially for companies going under. Why leave some closed-source relic behind as a worthless chapter 11 asset when you can give it to people who can continue to develop it?
Companies in bankruptcy can't give away assets; they have to be sold to pay off creditors. (Though if software is truly worthless, perhaps the highest bidder might be someone who would pay $1 to open source it.)
Fact is, open source is not mainly supported by academia. Maybe a few projects got started as class projects, but the good ones have been worked on by many people simply because they wanted to.
Agreed that not many people are assigned writing open source as homework, or are even funded on a grant for doing so, but indirectly the subsidizing effect of academia is powerful. How many grad students and academic IT people have devoted serious time to open source software vs. persons employed in the private sector? Isn't the first group disproportionately large if not a majority?
My first post was a reply to a comment which was sent to the Phantom Zone; I assumed the reply disappeared too, so I reposted it. Turns out I was wrong. Sorry.
1. Hackers who write open source software seem to do so where there is no mature market for that software (i.e., they do it for free because no one will pay them to do it, not because they are motivated more by ego gratification than by money, as ESR suggests).
2. Funding by government and academic bodies has significantly contributed to the development of open source software, and to that extent government intervention in the software market (i.e., by directly or indirectly subsidizing the writing of open source software) may be desirable. (Contra ESR?)
3. To the extent that software companies try to co-opt open source developers by hiring them, they undermine themselves by encouraging more people to become open source developers (i.e., so they can get hired).
4. Programmers in countries such as Canada and Scandinavia contribute more per capita to free software than programmers in the USA, perhaps because there isn't a ready market for their skills in their home countries, which suggests that wealthier countries won't necessarily move toward developing more open source software. The breakdown of labor market barriers in a united Europe may therefore affect the rate of development of open source software (i.e., by encouraging those programmers to go where there are jobs rather than stay in grad school hacking kernels or whatever).
5. It might be a useful strategy for some software companies to permit some level of piracy rather than crack down on all piracy and thereby encourage development of open source alternatives.
P.S. Most of this is econ terminology, not poli sci.
1. Hackers who write open source software seem to do so where there is no mature market for that software (i.e., they do it for free because no one will pay them to do it, not because they are motivated more by ego gratification than by money, as ESR suggests).
2. Funding by government and academic bodies has significantly contributed to the development of open source software, and to that extent government intervention in the software market (i.e., by directly or indirectly subsidizing the writing of open source software) may be desirable. (Contra ESR?)
3. To the extent that software companies try to co-opt open source developers by hiring them, they undermine themselves by encouraging more people to become open source developers (i.e., so they can get hired).
4. Programmers in countries such as Canada and Scandinavia contribute more per capita to free software than programmers in the USA, perhaps because there isn't a ready market for their skills in their home countries, which suggests that wealthier countries won't necessarily move toward developing more open source software. The breakdown of labor market barriers in a united Europe may therefore affect the rate of development of open source software (i.e., by encouraging those programmers to go where there are jobs rather than stay in grad school hacking kernels or whatever).
5. It might be a useful strategy for some software companies to permit some level of piracy rather than crack down on all piracy and thereby encourage development of open source alternatives.
Slashdot Mirror
The Constitution distinguishes betweeen the rights of citizens and the rights of persons, which term includes aliens as well as domestic and foreign corporations. The Fifth Amendment applies to persons, including Elcomsoft and its Russian employees.
It is unclear what rights aliens or foreign corporations have under the First Amendment, but it's irrelevant because the argument would be that the DMCA violates the First Amendment rights of US citizens who have constitutionally protected uses for Elcomsoft's product.
"... I can't think of a drug he could have taken where he would have disintegrated in 15 weeks."
Belushi? Coke? Chateau Marmont? Hello?
Are there any hard drugs which wouldn't do some serious damage after 15 weeks?
I don't think this works in outer space, which I presume is an almost frictionless environment.
(This is a serious question, or at least I think it is.)
Heretic! Bow down before Escherichia coli europaensis, lest I smite thee.
I would assume that over four hours, most viewers would be alerted to the fact that they are watching a movie on TV by the demands of their kidneys.
It's a business group, not a consumer group, notwithstanding the name.
Even worse, imagine if the US Patent & Trademark Office kept detailed descriptions of patented Intel technologies in its public records.
Well, then, get your kinfolk and neighbours together and have an old-time kernel building bee.
Another example is David Eggers' McSweeney's Books, which is basically the publishing equivalent of an independent record label. This article relates that McSweeney's can do a very good looking hardcover (better than most of what you see at B&N or Borders) for $2.80/copy. Makes you think.
Exactly how do you imagine one would go about selling marijuana "online"? At some point, even the most stoned customer would demand a delivery of tangible product.
This is the premise for what could be the most boring thriller ever sold at an airport newsstand.
Seriously, 19 centuries after Juvenal -- the Roman satiric poet who remarked, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, or "Who watches the watchmen?" -- it is no longer the height of originality to point out that any scheme for exercise of regulatory authority will require some control on the regulator's power. If you have some interesting comment to make about the form that control should take, great. Otherwise, it would save time if people would just say "Juvenal's Remark" instead of spelling out at length what is obvious.
No, they don't. They only think they do, unless there is nothing in the trash each night each night except coffee cups, sandwich wrappers and pencil shavings, which I can't imagine is actually the case.
A document retention policy might also be advisable for the additional reason that it's not a good idea to have documents lying around when both the authors and recipients are long gone from the company (perhaps even deceased), and no one at the company understands what the documents mean or why they were prepared. At that point, there's no benefit to retaining the documents: they can serve only as potential ammunition for an adversary in a lawsuit. An adversary can draw erroneous inferences even from innocently prepared documents, and if you can't put the author on the witness stand to say, "That's not what I meant," what do you do?
(Note that so-called "ancient" documents -- which in federal court means documents more than 20 years old, see Fed. R. Evid. 803(16) -- are ordinarily admissible as evidence just like testimony from an eyewitness even though they are hearsay.)
Also, I think that you can publish to PDF from some versions of WordPerfect, which is not as expensive as Acrobat.
(Incidentally, if you see that FOO-PAC gave a chunk of money to this candidate, don't jump to any conclusions before you see what sums that PAC gave to other candidates. Some PACs spread around a lot of money but devote the really big bucks to just a few candidates.)
(Oddly, for such a tech-savvy guy, he's not set up for secure credit-card contributions over the internet; most campaign web sites are. I usually send amounts totalling $1-2K a year to various campaigns -- usually because their opponent annoys me -- and I almost always contribute by CC.)
I'm probably taking this out of context, but this is a silly thing to say: [snip]
Agreed, also because if the software has any market value, it can't be given away by a failed company -- the software product will be sold to pay off creditors.
Companies in bankruptcy can't give away assets; they have to be sold to pay off creditors. (Though if software is truly worthless, perhaps the highest bidder might be someone who would pay $1 to open source it.)
It's "a complete waste of time" because he wrote "0" as opposed to "undefined" or "not applicable"?
Agreed that not many people are assigned writing open source as homework, or are even funded on a grant for doing so, but indirectly the subsidizing effect of academia is powerful. How many grad students and academic IT people have devoted serious time to open source software vs. persons employed in the private sector? Isn't the first group disproportionately large if not a majority?
(Score: -1, Touchy)
My first post was a reply to a comment which was sent to the Phantom Zone; I assumed the reply disappeared too, so I reposted it. Turns out I was wrong. Sorry.
1. Hackers who write open source software seem to do so where there is no mature market for that software (i.e., they do it for free because no one will pay them to do it, not because they are motivated more by ego gratification than by money, as ESR suggests).
2. Funding by government and academic bodies has significantly contributed to the development of open source software, and to that extent government intervention in the software market (i.e., by directly or indirectly subsidizing the writing of open source software) may be desirable. (Contra ESR?)
3. To the extent that software companies try to co-opt open source developers by hiring them, they undermine themselves by encouraging more people to become open source developers (i.e., so they can get hired).
4. Programmers in countries such as Canada and Scandinavia contribute more per capita to free software than programmers in the USA, perhaps because there isn't a ready market for their skills in their home countries, which suggests that wealthier countries won't necessarily move toward developing more open source software. The breakdown of labor market barriers in a united Europe may therefore affect the rate of development of open source software (i.e., by encouraging those programmers to go where there are jobs rather than stay in grad school hacking kernels or whatever).
5. It might be a useful strategy for some software companies to permit some level of piracy rather than crack down on all piracy and thereby encourage development of open source alternatives.
P.S. Most of this is econ terminology, not poli sci.
Anyway, the author is making the following points (see the last part of the essay):
1. Hackers who write open source software seem to do so where there is no mature market for that software (i.e., they do it for free because no one will pay them to do it, not because they are motivated more by ego gratification than by money, as ESR suggests).
2. Funding by government and academic bodies has significantly contributed to the development of open source software, and to that extent government intervention in the software market (i.e., by directly or indirectly subsidizing the writing of open source software) may be desirable. (Contra ESR?)
3. To the extent that software companies try to co-opt open source developers by hiring them, they undermine themselves by encouraging more people to become open source developers (i.e., so they can get hired).
4. Programmers in countries such as Canada and Scandinavia contribute more per capita to free software than programmers in the USA, perhaps because there isn't a ready market for their skills in their home countries, which suggests that wealthier countries won't necessarily move toward developing more open source software. The breakdown of labor market barriers in a united Europe may therefore affect the rate of development of open source software (i.e., by encouraging those programmers to go where there are jobs rather than stay in grad school hacking kernels or whatever).
5. It might be a useful strategy for some software companies to permit some level of piracy rather than crack down on all piracy and thereby encourage development of open source alternatives.