Well, the military (i believe it was the marines) did build a first person shooter for training purposes around 1996. It was based off of quake.
Its purpose was to simulate situations that would require the players to utilize small unit tactics to achieve goals. It was about teaching them to work together, not about killing things.
I dont know how effective it was or how much it was used though. There was a small piece about it in a Playboy magazine.
So basically the NY court system is like starbucks. You go from Supreme to Apellate to Appeals. Isn't there such a thing as a regular court?
regular court isnt different enough. It's now "Maple Nut Crunch Court".
But, if you are going to be involved in legal action in New York, I highly recommend you try the "Grande Latte Court". It's judiciously sprinkled with sidebar motions and contains a high percentage of legislatively recommended fibre by-product.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled ranting about whatever this topic is.
so, if they find during their audit that there is another black hat (or more than one) in their network that they didnt know about, does the total cost of damages they avoided by finding that guy mitigate the damages claimed against Lamo?
somehow, i'm betting they only count damages in one direction.
Did you miss that whole anti-trust thing? MS WAS dragged into court and all the lured details came out. MS won and came out stronger then they were before
technical correction:
Microsoft lost and came out stronger than they were before.
until the get all the kinks worked out of their copy protection schemes, they are just going to have to stick to their backup plan (only releasing music nobody wants a copy of).
In the first movie, when the agents capture Morpheus, they take him to a secure location to interrogate him. Unlike the interrogation room where the agents took Thomas Anderson, the interrogation room for Morpheus has a big glass curtain window.
Why? I mean, shouldn't they stick Morpheus in a windowless concrete cell?
They took Neo to an interrogation room in a police station because they were just interviewing him and they arrested him in front of a bunch of cops.
They took Morpheus somewhere else because they were drugging and torturing him and doing that in a police station would be problematic and disruptive of the harmony of population of the matrix.
They probably believed that it was a safe enough location. there were 3 agents there and a building full of security. They didnt believe Neo was "the one" and didnt believe he could fight his way in and get past 3 agents to get Morpheus.
Then, Neo and Trinity storm into the building (killing several people by shooting first but that's a well-known debate). They take an elevator up to the roof and drop some explosives into the lobby. There's a helicopter on the roof, and Trinity tells Tank she needs a program to fly it.
Personally, i dont have a problem with all the people they shot. it's a war. there's always collateral damage. you just have to decide if it is an acceptable amount for the objective.
Was the helicopter part of Trinity's plan when she went in?
I'd say no. She didnt know there was a helicopter on the roof.
If it was part of their plan, how come Trinity didn't download the helicopter training program before they set off alarms and had a bunch of people trying to kill them? And if it's not part of their plan, what was their plan when they got to the roof? Were they planning to rappel down the side of the building, maybe?
I think their plan was something like this: Fight their way to the elevator creating a situation in the lobby.Hopefully this will draw away at least one of the agents to check on it. Take the elevator to the roof. Blow up the elevator. This slows down reinforcements and/or agents getting back upstairs. rappel or use the window washing system to go down the outside of the building. Blow out the window and grab Morpheus. Either go down the outside of the building, or back to the roof and jump to another building. Hope that in the confusion you can get away without having to fight a bunch of Agents.
Not a great plan, but they didnt really have a lot to work with.
When they saw the helicopter it seemed like a much better idea than the rappelling part.
I found IBM wanting to reduce my hourly rate for SCO bashing as so many people are willing to do it for free!
How is a guy ment to make a buck these days;-)
so what you are saying is that you had a contract with IBM, but they are dropping you in favour of using the fruits of a bunch of free labor?
wow. that sucks. You should sue them for breach of contract. While you are at it, sue the free guys for violating your copyright anytime they say anything that sounds remotely similar to your anti-SCO comments.
Well, a few years ago my brother was planning to go back to college and get an MBA (he has a computer engineering degree from Texas A&M). I asked him why he wanted to get an MBA instead of getting a masters in something interesting and not full of shit (i'm biased, but i'm self aware too). His response was that there's more chicks in the MBA program than the engineering programs.
It is insider trading. It just isnt necessarily illegal insider trading.
This does lead me to wonder about an end-run around the illegal insider trading issue though...
If i was CEO at a place like SCO, it seems like i could set a pre-planned schedule to sell at certain price points or dates and then time my stock-pumping press announcements to coincide with what is most advantageous for my schedule.
That seems like it'd be hard to prove from a legal standpoint and would allow me to pump and dump my own company's stock without fear of an SEC investigation.
Surely that has already been thought of and there's some mechanism in place to counter that, right?
(nb. i dont really play in the stock market, so reality may be markedly different than what i'm seeing from my window)
Yes, they did. And they were selling the same code to institutions for $50,000 at the same time, so it certainly wasn't a release into public domain. Stop and think about it; this is copyright, not a trade secret. Just giving someone the source doesn't provide them license to do what they want. The analog would be Bloomsbury Publishing giving free copies of the newest Harry Potter book to schools. Would doing so cause them to surrender their copyright to that work?
well, that exact piece of code was also published in a book with no restrictions on its use. (publication of the book was approved by SCO, who held the copyright on it at the time)
It was also published in Kernighan and Ritchie's C programming book without restriction when AT&T owned the code.
Which is basically the point I was trying to make: untangling this whole mess is going to be very difficult. And, as much as I want SCO to be absolutely, 100% wrong across the board, I'm not so cocksure as to go off claiming that it's the case before some of this untangling has actually been pursued.
I dont think untangling the mess will be difficult. I think SCO proving a case will be insanely difficult. The reason we know so much about arbitrary lines of code is because there's tons of documentation and history for it all. It is very easy for this history to destroy SCO's claims and they are the ones who have to do the exhaustive research to prove those claims.
What I'm particularly wary of is the scads of ignorant comments along the lines of, "Look! The code is from before 1978 (or 1973)! SCO didn't even exist! It must not be theirs!" Intellectual property can be bought and sold. The logic of that statement is a sound as claming that there's no way I could possibly own my house because it was built before I was born.
i agree that the age of the code relative to SCO as a company has no bearing on the ownership of the code. I also agree that anyone making that statement is foolish.
It's hard to not be very optimistic about the SCO case, though. The only code sample they are claiming copyright infringement on that has made it to public scrutiny, they dont even have a copyright on. Their assertions relative to the case border on the absurd. The claims made by their legal representation are clearly contradicted by the text of the laws they are citing to make their claims. And they chose to target a company that spends more on break room coffee than SCO has in total assets.
well, if the code has remained unchanged since January of '73, then the same code is in versions 2, 3 and 4 of Unix.
AT&T gave the sources to Unix away free to academic institutions sometime around 1974. Additionally, Caldera made some of the sources available under a BSD style license in Jan. 2002.
There is also the possibility that some of the "infringing" code comes from the from scratch UNIX rewrite by Tanenbaum (minix released in 1986) that was the basis of Linux. (legally, minix can be used as if it were public domain)
They might hold a copyright on that code. However, prior owners of that copyright gave that code away for free.
They are going to have a lot of fun trying to show that really ancient pieces of code like that didnt come from sources that were freely released by prior owners of the code.
OMG THAT MEANS I CAN SELL WINDOWS FOR $1 A COPY NOW!!!!11 i mean it came with my dell so i own it right?
you could sell the one copy you got with your computer. To make additional copies and sell them would violate copyright law.
That is why microsoft has an EULA to place further restrictions on you. The questionable enforcability of those EULAs is why microsoft (or the OEMs on microsoft's behalf) uses technological measures to tie the copy to the machine in a way that makes it useless without the machine it came with.
Hey loser- you may think it is funny to joke about shooting babies, but outside of your close-knit circle of pasty white, pear shaped, stinky nerd friends, that is not funny and it's rather offensive.
Learn some respect, moron.
Jonathan Swift just called. He says he's sorry.
He'd like to invite you over to dinner as an apology.
Yes, but without the GPL, you have only 'standard' copyright permitting the use of the code in question
true, but the GPL itself specifically allows modification without releasing the derivative work as long as you do not distribute the work. Use internal to a company is specifically listed as not being distribution under the GPL terms.
So they are actually still compliant with the GPL in the case described in the parent post.
But does the company that bought the license obtain all the usual rights under the GPL, should they wish to distribute further?
unless SCO's license allows them to distribute the supposedly infringed code with a license for it, they would not be able to legally distribute the linux kernel anyway. They would be violating their SCO license, even if they weren't violating the GPL.
I think SCO has already said that their license only allows for binary-only use of a linux kernel. They dont allow source or distribution.
Personally, i'm glad their whole case is frivolous and legally absurd (well, at least in the eyes of several copyright lawyers).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the military (i believe it was the marines) did build a first person shooter for training purposes around 1996. It was based off of quake.
Its purpose was to simulate situations that would require the players to utilize small unit tactics to achieve goals. It was about teaching them to work together, not about killing things.
I dont know how effective it was or how much it was used though.
There was a small piece about it in a Playboy magazine.
7-4 mod 2 = 5 mod 2
it seems to me (and i could be wrong about this) that you need parentheses around (7-4) for that to work.
since modulus is a division operation, it would occur prior to subtraction and, without parentheses, you would end up with 7 = 1.
So basically the NY court system is like starbucks. You go from Supreme to Apellate to Appeals. Isn't there such a thing as a regular court?
regular court isnt different enough. It's now "Maple Nut Crunch Court".
But, if you are going to be involved in legal action in New York, I highly recommend you try the "Grande Latte Court". It's judiciously sprinkled with sidebar motions and contains a high percentage of legislatively recommended fibre by-product.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled ranting about whatever this topic is.
so, if they find during their audit that there is another black hat (or more than one) in their network that they didnt know about, does the total cost of damages they avoided by finding that guy mitigate the damages claimed against Lamo?
somehow, i'm betting they only count damages in one direction.
Did you miss that whole anti-trust thing? MS WAS dragged into court and all the lured details came out. MS won and came out stronger then they were before
technical correction:
Microsoft lost and came out stronger than they were before.
it shouldnt sound disturbingly familiar.
they existed only to pursue the legal action against the company that crushed them out of business through predatory practises.
They wouldnt have even had to stick around to do that if the Feds would do their damned jobs.
until the get all the kinks worked out of their copy protection schemes, they are just going to have to stick to their backup plan (only releasing music nobody wants a copy of).
yeah, that's a funny one. Especially where they note :
Number of Potential Impacts = 2
So this sucker is gonna bounce back to hit us again !
There's gonna be two impacts, this asteroid hitting you, and you hitting the floor.
(didnt we learn anything in the high school cafeteria?)
What keeps a normal Lindows user from editing their /etc/apt/sources.list and apt-get installing away?
lack of technical knowledge and desire to do so.
dont forget Cisco.
their original product was the result of a university research project.
In the first movie, when the agents capture Morpheus, they take him to a secure location to interrogate him. Unlike the interrogation room where the agents took Thomas Anderson, the interrogation room for Morpheus has a big glass curtain window.
Why? I mean, shouldn't they stick Morpheus in a windowless concrete cell?
They took Neo to an interrogation room in a police station because they were just interviewing him and they arrested him in front of a bunch of cops.
They took Morpheus somewhere else because they were drugging and torturing him and doing that in a police station would be problematic and disruptive of the harmony of population of the matrix.
They probably believed that it was a safe enough location. there were 3 agents there and a building full of security. They didnt believe Neo was "the one" and didnt believe he could fight his way in and get past 3 agents to get Morpheus.
Then, Neo and Trinity storm into the building (killing several people by shooting first but that's a well-known debate). They take an elevator up to the roof and drop some explosives into the lobby. There's a helicopter on the roof, and Trinity tells Tank she needs a program to fly it.
Personally, i dont have a problem with all the people they shot. it's a war. there's always collateral damage. you just have to decide if it is an acceptable amount for the objective.
Was the helicopter part of Trinity's plan when she went in?
I'd say no. She didnt know there was a helicopter on the roof.
If it was part of their plan, how come Trinity didn't download the helicopter training program before they set off alarms and had a bunch of people trying to kill them? And if it's not part of their plan, what was their plan when they got to the roof? Were they planning to rappel down the side of the building, maybe?
I think their plan was something like this:
Fight their way to the elevator creating a situation in the lobby.Hopefully this will draw away at least one of the agents to check on it.
Take the elevator to the roof.
Blow up the elevator. This slows down reinforcements and/or agents getting back upstairs.
rappel or use the window washing system to go down the outside of the building.
Blow out the window and grab Morpheus.
Either go down the outside of the building, or back to the roof and jump to another building.
Hope that in the confusion you can get away without having to fight a bunch of Agents.
Not a great plan, but they didnt really have a lot to work with.
When they saw the helicopter it seemed like a much better idea than the rappelling part.
I found IBM wanting to reduce my hourly rate for SCO bashing as so many people are willing to do it for free!
;-)
How is a guy ment to make a buck these days
so what you are saying is that you had a contract with IBM, but they are dropping you in favour of using the fruits of a bunch of free labor?
wow. that sucks. You should sue them for breach of contract. While you are at it, sue the free guys for violating your copyright anytime they say anything that sounds remotely similar to your anti-SCO comments.
That'll show 'em.
i agree that publication doesnt invalidate the copyright, but it does make it useless for claiming any damages later.
I'd go into more detail on why i think that, but my wife wants to go to dinner.
actually, i'm saying the opposite of that. the algorithm they published is certainly fair game.
the person responding to me is bringing up the issue that publishing it doesnt invalidate the copyright on it.
I'm gonna respond to that in a minute (on his response to the same parent as your comment)
Well, a few years ago my brother was planning to go back to college and get an MBA (he has a computer engineering degree from Texas A&M). I asked him why he wanted to get an MBA instead of getting a masters in something interesting and not full of shit (i'm biased, but i'm self aware too). His response was that there's more chicks in the MBA program than the engineering programs.
It is insider trading. It just isnt necessarily illegal insider trading.
This does lead me to wonder about an end-run around the illegal insider trading issue though...
If i was CEO at a place like SCO, it seems like i could set a pre-planned schedule to sell at certain price points or dates and then time my stock-pumping press announcements to coincide with what is most advantageous for my schedule.
That seems like it'd be hard to prove from a legal standpoint and would allow me to pump and dump my own company's stock without fear of an SEC investigation.
Surely that has already been thought of and there's some mechanism in place to counter that, right?
(nb. i dont really play in the stock market, so reality may be markedly different than what i'm seeing from my window)
extortion requires force, intimidation, or undue power.
it sounds like intimidation to me.
a more apt word might be the oft (in SCO threads, at least) mentioned barratry.
Yes, they did. And they were selling the same code to institutions for $50,000 at the same time, so it certainly wasn't a release into public domain. Stop and think about it; this is copyright, not a trade secret. Just giving someone the source doesn't provide them license to do what they want. The analog would be Bloomsbury Publishing giving free copies of the newest Harry Potter book to schools. Would doing so cause them to surrender their copyright to that work?
well, that exact piece of code was also published in a book with no restrictions on its use. (publication of the book was approved by SCO, who held the copyright on it at the time)
It was also published in Kernighan and Ritchie's C programming book without restriction when AT&T owned the code.
Which is basically the point I was trying to make: untangling this whole mess is going to be very difficult. And, as much as I want SCO to be absolutely, 100% wrong across the board, I'm not so cocksure as to go off claiming that it's the case before some of this untangling has actually been pursued.
I dont think untangling the mess will be difficult. I think SCO proving a case will be insanely difficult. The reason we know so much about arbitrary lines of code is because there's tons of documentation and history for it all. It is very easy for this history to destroy SCO's claims and they are the ones who have to do the exhaustive research to prove those claims.
What I'm particularly wary of is the scads of ignorant comments along the lines of, "Look! The code is from before 1978 (or 1973)! SCO didn't even exist! It must not be theirs!" Intellectual property can be bought and sold. The logic of that statement is a sound as claming that there's no way I could possibly own my house because it was built before I was born.
i agree that the age of the code relative to SCO as a company has no bearing on the ownership of the code. I also agree that anyone making that statement is foolish.
It's hard to not be very optimistic about the SCO case, though. The only code sample they are claiming copyright infringement on that has made it to public scrutiny, they dont even have a copyright on. Their assertions relative to the case border on the absurd. The claims made by their legal representation are clearly contradicted by the text of the laws they are citing to make their claims. And they chose to target a company that spends more on break room coffee than SCO has in total assets.
It's hard not to be optimistic.
well, if the code has remained unchanged since January of '73, then the same code is in versions 2, 3 and 4 of Unix.
AT&T gave the sources to Unix away free to academic institutions sometime around 1974.
Additionally, Caldera made some of the sources available under a BSD style license in Jan. 2002.
There is also the possibility that some of the "infringing" code comes from the from scratch UNIX rewrite by Tanenbaum (minix released in 1986) that was the basis of Linux. (legally, minix can be used as if it were public domain)
They might hold a copyright on that code. However, prior owners of that copyright gave that code away for free.
They are going to have a lot of fun trying to show that really ancient pieces of code like that didnt come from sources that were freely released by prior owners of the code.
After unpacking 22.8MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
You should have hit Y.
Your disk space wants to be free.
Slashdot is hardly silent.
I would say the silent majority has no clue any of this is going on.
OMG THAT MEANS I CAN SELL WINDOWS FOR $1 A COPY NOW!!!!11 i mean it came with my dell so i own it right?
you could sell the one copy you got with your computer. To make additional copies and sell them would violate copyright law.
That is why microsoft has an EULA to place further restrictions on you. The questionable enforcability of those EULAs is why microsoft (or the OEMs on microsoft's behalf) uses technological measures to tie the copy to the machine in a way that makes it useless without the machine it came with.
Hey loser- you may think it is funny to joke about shooting babies, but outside of your close-knit circle of pasty white, pear shaped, stinky nerd friends, that is not funny and it's rather offensive.
Learn some respect, moron.
Jonathan Swift just called. He says he's sorry.
He'd like to invite you over to dinner as an apology.
Yes, but without the GPL, you have only 'standard' copyright permitting the use of the code in question
true, but the GPL itself specifically allows modification without releasing the derivative work as long as you do not distribute the work. Use internal to a company is specifically listed as not being distribution under the GPL terms.
So they are actually still compliant with the GPL in the case described in the parent post.
But does the company that bought the license obtain all the usual rights under the GPL, should they wish to distribute further?
unless SCO's license allows them to distribute the supposedly infringed code with a license for it, they would not be able to legally distribute the linux kernel anyway. They would be violating their SCO license, even if they weren't violating the GPL.
I think SCO has already said that their license only allows for binary-only use of a linux kernel. They dont allow source or distribution.
Personally, i'm glad their whole case is frivolous and legally absurd (well, at least in the eyes of several copyright lawyers).