Yes, but B is totally incorrect. Therefore the conclusion reached is totally incorrect; I wasn't critiquing the logic, which works fine (GIGO), but the assumptions and conclusions.
Surely no law has been violated by the publishers of the web site. Someone who downloads the verilog and uses it illegally could be in violation of the law, but not the publisher, surely?
This is one of the biggest problems with the whole notion of patents for abstract devices like software. Such patents blur the lines separating patent and copyright in some very unpredictable ways.
If a computer program or algorithm can be patented, then is publishing some explanation of the algorithm a violation (because it's functional), or is it protected because it's simply speech? How much of a gray area is there?
It shouldn't matter how their competitors were able to copy their RISC processors, the important fact here is that the device has been granted a US patent.
Yes, but if I understand correctly, posting a description of a machine (in the English language) is not necessarily infringement, is it? I'm not sure if a patent can trump such a posting, as patents are (in theory) supposed to be open, not secret. Now, if you took the info from the posting and used it to build a product, that might be infringement...
I don't recall any religious tradition that makes unpredictability a property of souls.
There has been an enormous amount of discussion of these subjects, including many debates and conferences between scientists and religious figures, attempting to determine what neurological research means for the existence of the soul.
One of the more sacred aspects of the soul is its ability to exist independently of heredity and environment, and yet still to influence our actions as human beings-- in other words, give us independence from simple physical needs. Free will, in other words. One of the reasons a complete understanding of the brain is so troubling to religion, is that it quite possibly may show that our minds (and thus the decisions we make) are a straightforward deterministic machine.
If this is the case, so some fear, there can be no room for the soul; there can be no room for an external component of our mind that influences our actions, and yet does not permanently reside in our body (ie, it existed before we were born, and will continue to exist after we die.)
Does non-determinism fix the problem? Some say yes, some say no. Those who see quantum randomness as a pure random function (that is, not only statistically random, but truly not influenced by the "hand of God") would say absolutely not-- putting a slot machine into the brain doesn't leave room for divinity.
On the other hand, putting a slot machine into the brain does make it more than a simple deterministic machine. There is room for something that's not simply animal. Does that mean that those random decisions are "the soul", or are "God"? Maybe-- if you believe that God is omniscient, and therefore not bound by physical laws, you can posit that those apparently "random" decisions, in God's hands, might have meaning. Even if a statistical analysis shows them to be a creamy 50% one way, 50% another, if you accept that God dictates the unknowable state of every particle even before it's measured, then you can posit that there might be something else influencing the human mind. Whether that something else exists, or is just a hope, I can't tell you.
Even if the brain is found to be a deterministic machine, for which every single thought and action can be simulated by a suitably complex computer, that doesn't rule out the existence of the human soul. But it might be harder for many to accept.
In fact man religious traditions claim an omniscient God making souls entirely predictable
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Many of the religions you speak of also state that the workings of God are unknowable by man. This doesn't necessarily imply that the soul is unpredictable-- that's a different question. But maybe you could clarify the above; how does the existence of an omniscient God make the soul predictable? Unless you constrain God to live within the bounds of the physical laws(which would make him less than omniscient), I don't see why God would require souls to be predictable or unpredictable.
Why would it change the debate on whether humans have souls?
There has always been an uneasy feeling in religious camps that a complete understanding of the human brain could reveal us to be nothing more than complex automatons who "think" we're more than simple machines. It's certainly not mentioned in the bible, but there has been a lot of philisophical discussion of these matters.
From this point of view, one of the worst things that could happen is that we could someday understand every aspect of the brain, and thus human behavior. There wouldn't be room for a soul. Of course, faith is faith, and you don't have to see it on paper to believe. But it would cause a lot of people to doubt.
On the other hand, if the human brain does employ quantum principles, it leaves the door open to something much more complex. This doesn't in any way prove or disprove the existence of a soul, but it might preclude our scientifically devaluing the notion... It's far easier to understand a machine when parts of its workings aren't shrouded in quantum uncertainty. Even better, if some of the fundamental calculations that underly human thought take place in the quantum realm, then you can't predict human behavior-- it becomes not only mysterious by way of its complexity, but also because of the fundamental laws of the universe. If you believe that the unpredictable quantum workings of the universe are controlled by a higher power, and the brain is somewhat governed by those laws, then there's at least an opening for the existence of what might be considered a soul.
As to your point, I don't think very many religions discuss this as few of them tend to think about quantum computing, and even fewer expect the human brain to be understood in our lifetime. But someday these issues could be more significant to religious belief than Darwin's theory of evolution ever was, depending on what we learn. Now I don't know if that's a good thing-- although I like the idea that the human brain might be more than a few zillion simple switches.
If it is possible for quantum computers to look sideways into parallel universes to perform their calculations and evolution dictates that any lifeform that does not take full advantage of its enviroment will not survive to procreate then humans must have a latent ability to percieve parallel worlds too.
Which is totally incorrect, as the other two posters made clear.
However, an element of quantum-computing in the human brain would be an amazing thing to find. It would certainly change the debate on whether humans have a "soul", or are simply elaborate meat computers.
IANAL, and IANA{Citizen of the US of A} either, but the DVDCCA also have to show evidence that it was lawful for Johansen to agree to that contract. If the law in Norway is that reverse engineering is lawful for interoperability, then any clauses in the click-wrap agreement are null and void, and hence Johansen can be considered to have not agreed to them, regardless of what the agreement actually says.
Not only that, but before they get that far, they'd have to show some evidence that he actually agreed to the click-through license. According to the trial court, DVDCCA provided no evidence that he even did that. Instead, they pointed to his general history of "boastfulness" as circumstancial evidence of his... lawlessness, I guess?
Kinda scary to think that some silly comments you posted on the net could lead some court to assume that you had agreed to a contract, even if there's no evidence that you ever did... Actually, this is one of the problems with click-through licenses. It's so damn hard to prove that an individual actually agreed to one, that the courts feel free to guess, essentially... and put sanctions on the individual who may or may not have done so, even in the absence of real evidence that a contract was agreed to.
The courts did not say that Bunner boasted about anything. His lack of boasting proves nothing.
The question was whether Johansen clicked on the license before he reverse engineered DeCSS, and if he did, whether that license applies in his jurisdiction. Whether Johansen "knew" he was breaking the law or not is completely irrelevant.
All that matters is whether the DVDCCA could show evidence that Johansen agreed to and subsequently broke a legal contract, thereby making the DeCSS source code "criminally obtained" under the California trade-secret law, and thus affecting Bunner's ability to use it (though, in a separate decision, the appeals court later decided that he couldn't be enjoined from posting it, no matter what.)
The DVDCCA could not show any such evidence. Therefore, they used the fact that Johansen thumbed his nose at other laws as evidence that he might have broken this one. So, no concrete evidence. Not even "circumstancial evidence", as the record states. That "evidence" amounts to spurious name-calling. But because no judge likes a smartass, the court accepted this lack of evidence to the point that they issued an injunction.
That's crappy law, aside from the separate first amendment considerations.
Not a terribly big deal. If this is the compromise that the courts arrive at, in order to guarantee a first amendment protection for code, it could be worse. And only the "controversial" portion of the code need be distributed as source.
It will certainly not benefit the closed-source community, which is bad. But it will help open-source projects.
It's not that they lacked evidence that Mr. Bunner had posted DeCSS. The question was simply "Where does that posting stand legally?"
It was clear that Bunner posted DeCSS. He admitted it. The question was whether that posting fell afoul of the California trade secret law; specifically, was it an illegally obtained work, or was it a derivative of an illegally obtained work?
DVDCCA seemed to completely lack evidence that Johansen violated the law in his reverse-engineering of CSS, the crux of the whole case. If Johansen didn't violate the law, then Bunner's copy of DeCSS was completely legal, and the plaintiff had no grounds. And lacking this evidence, the only thing the DVDCCA could present as justification for their case was the "circumstancial" evidence (although I wouldn't even call it that) that Johansen and friends weren't "respectful of the law."
I think that's lousy evidence on which to base something as drastic as an injunction. First amendment issues aside. But as you say, judges will be judges. Sometimes to their discredit.
Yes, you have a right to PEACEFUL protest, that does not mean you can...
Dress up as Native Americans and destroy private property on board several ships in Boston Harbor?
Stage a demonstration in Berlin, Germany that ultimately leads to the total destruction of a multi-billion dollar piece of public property?
Oh what the hell... If our democtratic governments want to be up front about what they're doing in those closed rooms, instead of keeping all negotiation details secret (from their own citizens!!)... Then I'm sure you won't have people (peacefully) protesting, and the idiots and anarchists that generally plague large peaceful protests won't have any place to go.
But what the hell... If it's legal and it's being carried out by our governments, it must be in our interest, I suppose.
If the "source code==expressive speech" argument is upheld by higher courts, the DMCA anti-circumvention clauses get a whole lot weaker. While there are protections for copyright in the constitution, there's no language that backs up something like the DMCA; that is, preventing the publication of uncopyrighted "speech" because it might be used to circumvent something else.
Essentially, if code is expressive speech, then the DMCA cannot stand against a 1st amendment claim.
The problem with cases like this, is that for all the judicial expertise involved, the decision always comes down to some silly issue that could go either way. It's generally an issue that the judges aren't terribly informed about-- what the heck do they know about Source Code?-- and therefore are free to vote any way they like to acheive a desired outcome. If the Supreme Court (assuming they eventually have to hear a DMCA case) decides that code isn't speech, then that's that. Too bad.
By the way, we should note that this case does not appear to have had any impact on the DMCA, but on a CA trade secret law.
Actually, the court's recognition of source code as expressive speech is a major step in the right direction, if it's upheld by higher courts.
The susequent balance of state (and presumably federal law) against constitutional interests could presumably put an axe in the DMCA's head-- if the code==speech assumption is upheld all the way to the Supreme Court. Don't count on that, of course.
"Plaintiff's case is problematic at this [stage]. Clearly they have no direct evidence at this point that Mr. Jon Johansen did the reverse engineering, and that he did so after clicking on any license agreement." Nevertheless, the court concluded that "the circumstantial evidence, available mostly due to the various defendants' inclination to boast about their disrespect for the law, is quite compelling on botht he issue of Mr. Johansen's improper means and the Defendants' knowledge of impropriety."
So essentially, nobody ever boasted that they reverse-engineered the thing, or that they clicked on a license... But simply by saying "CSS sucks" and "the DMCA is a stupid law, I should be allowed to post whatever I want", you can find yourself the defendant in a trial for which the plaintiff has minimal evidence against you?
Those nasty kids. We didn't have any real evidence against them, but they were so disrespectful.
The lenders will lend to a country because they know that the lifespan of a country is long while the lifespan of an individual is unpredictable.
That's a terrible assumption for the banks to make, don't you think? Banks should be lending based on the lifespan of that government, not on the lifespan of a hunk of land and some population. If that means tinpot dictators have to pay high interest rates to cover a bank's risk, then so be it. If it means that banks don't make foolish loans to tyrannical, arms-buying governments, then so be it. Why in god's name should the banks be exempted from using common business sense when making loans to nations?
If I loaned money to Slobodan Milosovic during the NATO campaign, could I really claim that I was making an intelligent loan to the Nation of Serbia? Or would I just be taking advantage of a desparate soon-to-be-ex-ruler's willingness to take any money, knowing that he probably wouldn't be around to pay it off?
if your father has a lot of debt and dies, his assets will be harvested to pay back that debt before you inherit a damned thing.
Those assets that can be harvested. If what remains of the assets can't be converted into money, the bank isn't going to collect much; that's the risk inherent in an such loans. Plenty of dot-com lenders found this out to their chagrin, as they practically gave away Cisco routers.
As to the collection of property, well, any bank should realize that in the event of a governmental failure, their ability to collect will be limited. Therefore, they should make their loans and set their interest accordingly. Providing enormous, low-interest loans to unstable, unrepresentative governments is an extraordinarily stupid business decision, one for which the banks should suffer, not the country itself.
you give all the reasons why it is obvious the problem is bad local government (e.x. Taliban) and why these people must be put out of power
One of the best ways to put these people out of power is not to loan them huge amounts of money which go into arms used to control the local population, and into swiss bank accounts to guarantee the well-being of these leaders.
For all our armchair quarterbacking, it's damn hard to overthrow a well-armed tyranny. And on those rare occasions when it happens, the victors should have the option of building a new stable government. Instead, the first thing that greets the new government is an IMF/World Bank kneecapper, coming to collect the money that the bank foolishly (and unethically) loaned to some tinpot dictator. When the new government can't pay, the IMF either destroys that country's credit (and ability to exist), or forces them to get rid of pesky things like the minimum wage, or child labor laws, in order to a) pay back the accumulating debt that they never agreed to take on, and b) make things cheaper for the West.
Dontcha think it's incumbent on the bank who made the loan to insure that the regime to which they're lending money is stable, and likely to invest it in ways that will pay them back? Or that they should bear a certain amount of responsibility (and risk) if it doesn't happen?
Should a company be held responsible if their business partner has questionable practices? Should a consumer be held responsible if they purchase products from a company that has questionable business practices?
Perhaps the products shouldn't be made available for sale in this country, regardless of who's designing/manufacturing/distributing them.
Make that a part of our trade policy, you'll see Nike changing their business partnerships fast.
Ideally, though, no law would be necessary; public pressure from their customers would be enough to convince them to pick more humane suppliers.
You can package anything you want with your OS, as long as you don't have a monopoly, and you're not using your monopoly power to shut out competitors (which Microsoft has succeeded in doing, and made it clear was their purpose.)
Take a look at some of the robber-baron anti-trust cases from the earlier part of this century.
Essentially, one big company started offering services that were controlled by smaller, competing companies. Because the larger company offered the services at an artificially low price, or offered them in combination with necessities like monopoly-controlled train access, or even forced people to use their services as a price of doing business, the smaller companies went out of business (or sold out for peanuts.) Then there were no competing companies, which we (as a society) have decided is a lousy situation. That's why we have anti-trust laws.
What's wrong with systematically including some equivalent of every 3rd party software package with your OS? Well, think about it. What if you were a software vendor, reliant on the Windows-using public. MS has the ability to decimate your company's profit margin by "dumping" a free version of your product to all of your users-- you can't afford to give it out free, and you can't enjoy the sort of default distribution they can, with their monopoly control of the OS.
We have laws against this sort of behavior in the physical world because it leads to ugly monopolies.
In time, any company so targeted will likely go out of business, leaving us with a large company with a broad software and services monopoly, which either abuses customers, or gets spectacularly broken up. The goal of this case is to avoid those two messy outcomes.
I am not claiming that the government sued them because of their refusual to give money. However, they did pursue it more vigoursly and worked the system hard.
That's the most unbelievably idiotic thesis I've ever heard. Essentially, you're saying that the Clinton administration wanted Microsoft active politically... even if any moron could see that the benefit would most likely go to the opposing party?
Of course Microsoft is giving some dough to both sides... But make no mistake. Microsoft knew that (even if they did contribute) the Gore campaign was not where their bread was buttered. A ten year old child could tell you that the Republican party was a better prospect for a large business looking to avoid gov't intervention.
And yet the Clinton administration made an enemy of an extremely wealthy corporation just so they could get them to fund the political opposition? That's inane.
Maybe the DOJ was actually doing something right, even though it was politically dangerous. Maybe two courts of varying ideologies have essentially agreed that Microsoft is a monopoly, and abuses that power. Of course, you could ignore all that and just make stuff up...
i just dchp'd myself an ip with my linux router. i didn't have to register with any software, although i have heard of others having to do this. is that just to get your email account active or something?
Quite a few friends of mine have Verizon DSL, and are forced to live with PPPoE rather than straight Ethernet w/ DHCP. Therefore, they have to use PPPoE drivers and Windows-only registration software (which fortunately I think you only have to run once when you get the line.)
Verizon's a big company, though, and apparently they're not forcing this on all of their users (yet.) My apologies. But keep your eyes open...
As the articles mention, they have a problem with both features. And the automatic strip-out feature. I think they realize that sharing free TV programs alone may not be the deadliest accusation, especially if there's a limit on the number of shares.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but B is totally incorrect. Therefore the conclusion reached is totally incorrect; I wasn't critiquing the logic, which works fine (GIGO), but the assumptions and conclusions.
This is one of the biggest problems with the whole notion of patents for abstract devices like software. Such patents blur the lines separating patent and copyright in some very unpredictable ways.
If a computer program or algorithm can be patented, then is publishing some explanation of the algorithm a violation (because it's functional), or is it protected because it's simply speech? How much of a gray area is there?
Yes, but if I understand correctly, posting a description of a machine (in the English language) is not necessarily infringement, is it? I'm not sure if a patent can trump such a posting, as patents are (in theory) supposed to be open, not secret. Now, if you took the info from the posting and used it to build a product, that might be infringement...
I'm probably wrong, though.
There has been an enormous amount of discussion of these subjects, including many debates and conferences between scientists and religious figures, attempting to determine what neurological research means for the existence of the soul.
One of the more sacred aspects of the soul is its ability to exist independently of heredity and environment, and yet still to influence our actions as human beings-- in other words, give us independence from simple physical needs. Free will, in other words. One of the reasons a complete understanding of the brain is so troubling to religion, is that it quite possibly may show that our minds (and thus the decisions we make) are a straightforward deterministic machine.
If this is the case, so some fear, there can be no room for the soul; there can be no room for an external component of our mind that influences our actions, and yet does not permanently reside in our body (ie, it existed before we were born, and will continue to exist after we die.)
Does non-determinism fix the problem? Some say yes, some say no. Those who see quantum randomness as a pure random function (that is, not only statistically random, but truly not influenced by the "hand of God") would say absolutely not-- putting a slot machine into the brain doesn't leave room for divinity.
On the other hand, putting a slot machine into the brain does make it more than a simple deterministic machine. There is room for something that's not simply animal. Does that mean that those random decisions are "the soul", or are "God"? Maybe-- if you believe that God is omniscient, and therefore not bound by physical laws, you can posit that those apparently "random" decisions, in God's hands, might have meaning. Even if a statistical analysis shows them to be a creamy 50% one way, 50% another, if you accept that God dictates the unknowable state of every particle even before it's measured, then you can posit that there might be something else influencing the human mind. Whether that something else exists, or is just a hope, I can't tell you.
Even if the brain is found to be a deterministic machine, for which every single thought and action can be simulated by a suitably complex computer, that doesn't rule out the existence of the human soul. But it might be harder for many to accept.
In fact man religious traditions claim an omniscient God making souls entirely predictable
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Many of the religions you speak of also state that the workings of God are unknowable by man. This doesn't necessarily imply that the soul is unpredictable-- that's a different question. But maybe you could clarify the above; how does the existence of an omniscient God make the soul predictable? Unless you constrain God to live within the bounds of the physical laws(which would make him less than omniscient), I don't see why God would require souls to be predictable or unpredictable.
There has always been an uneasy feeling in religious camps that a complete understanding of the human brain could reveal us to be nothing more than complex automatons who "think" we're more than simple machines. It's certainly not mentioned in the bible, but there has been a lot of philisophical discussion of these matters.
From this point of view, one of the worst things that could happen is that we could someday understand every aspect of the brain, and thus human behavior. There wouldn't be room for a soul. Of course, faith is faith, and you don't have to see it on paper to believe. But it would cause a lot of people to doubt.
On the other hand, if the human brain does employ quantum principles, it leaves the door open to something much more complex. This doesn't in any way prove or disprove the existence of a soul, but it might preclude our scientifically devaluing the notion... It's far easier to understand a machine when parts of its workings aren't shrouded in quantum uncertainty. Even better, if some of the fundamental calculations that underly human thought take place in the quantum realm, then you can't predict human behavior-- it becomes not only mysterious by way of its complexity, but also because of the fundamental laws of the universe. If you believe that the unpredictable quantum workings of the universe are controlled by a higher power, and the brain is somewhat governed by those laws, then there's at least an opening for the existence of what might be considered a soul.
As to your point, I don't think very many religions discuss this as few of them tend to think about quantum computing, and even fewer expect the human brain to be understood in our lifetime. But someday these issues could be more significant to religious belief than Darwin's theory of evolution ever was, depending on what we learn. Now I don't know if that's a good thing-- although I like the idea that the human brain might be more than a few zillion simple switches.
Which is totally incorrect, as the other two posters made clear.
However, an element of quantum-computing in the human brain would be an amazing thing to find. It would certainly change the debate on whether humans have a "soul", or are simply elaborate meat computers.
Not only that, but before they get that far, they'd have to show some evidence that he actually agreed to the click-through license. According to the trial court, DVDCCA provided no evidence that he even did that. Instead, they pointed to his general history of "boastfulness" as circumstancial evidence of his... lawlessness, I guess?
Kinda scary to think that some silly comments you posted on the net could lead some court to assume that you had agreed to a contract, even if there's no evidence that you ever did... Actually, this is one of the problems with click-through licenses. It's so damn hard to prove that an individual actually agreed to one, that the courts feel free to guess, essentially... and put sanctions on the individual who may or may not have done so, even in the absence of real evidence that a contract was agreed to.
The question was whether Johansen clicked on the license before he reverse engineered DeCSS, and if he did, whether that license applies in his jurisdiction. Whether Johansen "knew" he was breaking the law or not is completely irrelevant.
All that matters is whether the DVDCCA could show evidence that Johansen agreed to and subsequently broke a legal contract, thereby making the DeCSS source code "criminally obtained" under the California trade-secret law, and thus affecting Bunner's ability to use it (though, in a separate decision, the appeals court later decided that he couldn't be enjoined from posting it, no matter what.)
The DVDCCA could not show any such evidence. Therefore, they used the fact that Johansen thumbed his nose at other laws as evidence that he might have broken this one. So, no concrete evidence. Not even "circumstancial evidence", as the record states. That "evidence" amounts to spurious name-calling. But because no judge likes a smartass, the court accepted this lack of evidence to the point that they issued an injunction.
That's crappy law, aside from the separate first amendment considerations.
It will certainly not benefit the closed-source community, which is bad. But it will help open-source projects.
It's not that they lacked evidence that Mr. Bunner had posted DeCSS. The question was simply "Where does that posting stand legally?"
It was clear that Bunner posted DeCSS. He admitted it. The question was whether that posting fell afoul of the California trade secret law; specifically, was it an illegally obtained work, or was it a derivative of an illegally obtained work?
DVDCCA seemed to completely lack evidence that Johansen violated the law in his reverse-engineering of CSS, the crux of the whole case. If Johansen didn't violate the law, then Bunner's copy of DeCSS was completely legal, and the plaintiff had no grounds. And lacking this evidence, the only thing the DVDCCA could present as justification for their case was the "circumstancial" evidence (although I wouldn't even call it that) that Johansen and friends weren't "respectful of the law."
I think that's lousy evidence on which to base something as drastic as an injunction. First amendment issues aside. But as you say, judges will be judges. Sometimes to their discredit.
If the "source code==expressive speech" argument is upheld by higher courts, in this and other cases...
*adjusting sheepish expression*
Is this case being appealed?
Dress up as Native Americans and destroy private property on board several ships in Boston Harbor?
Stage a demonstration in Berlin, Germany that ultimately leads to the total destruction of a multi-billion dollar piece of public property?
Oh what the hell... If our democtratic governments want to be up front about what they're doing in those closed rooms, instead of keeping all negotiation details secret (from their own citizens!!)... Then I'm sure you won't have people (peacefully) protesting, and the idiots and anarchists that generally plague large peaceful protests won't have any place to go.
But what the hell... If it's legal and it's being carried out by our governments, it must be in our interest, I suppose.
If the "source code==expressive speech" argument is upheld by higher courts, the DMCA anti-circumvention clauses get a whole lot weaker. While there are protections for copyright in the constitution, there's no language that backs up something like the DMCA; that is, preventing the publication of uncopyrighted "speech" because it might be used to circumvent something else.
Essentially, if code is expressive speech, then the DMCA cannot stand against a 1st amendment claim.
The problem with cases like this, is that for all the judicial expertise involved, the decision always comes down to some silly issue that could go either way. It's generally an issue that the judges aren't terribly informed about-- what the heck do they know about Source Code?-- and therefore are free to vote any way they like to acheive a desired outcome. If the Supreme Court (assuming they eventually have to hear a DMCA case) decides that code isn't speech, then that's that. Too bad.
Actually, the court's recognition of source code as expressive speech is a major step in the right direction, if it's upheld by higher courts.
The susequent balance of state (and presumably federal law) against constitutional interests could presumably put an axe in the DMCA's head-- if the code==speech assumption is upheld all the way to the Supreme Court. Don't count on that, of course.
So essentially, nobody ever boasted that they reverse-engineered the thing, or that they clicked on a license... But simply by saying "CSS sucks" and "the DMCA is a stupid law, I should be allowed to post whatever I want", you can find yourself the defendant in a trial for which the plaintiff has minimal evidence against you?
Those nasty kids. We didn't have any real evidence against them, but they were so disrespectful.
Well, when the money being lent is often underwritten by the US taxpayers, why exercise discretion? You've got nothing to lose.
That's a terrible assumption for the banks to make, don't you think? Banks should be lending based on the lifespan of that government, not on the lifespan of a hunk of land and some population. If that means tinpot dictators have to pay high interest rates to cover a bank's risk, then so be it. If it means that banks don't make foolish loans to tyrannical, arms-buying governments, then so be it. Why in god's name should the banks be exempted from using common business sense when making loans to nations?
If I loaned money to Slobodan Milosovic during the NATO campaign, could I really claim that I was making an intelligent loan to the Nation of Serbia? Or would I just be taking advantage of a desparate soon-to-be-ex-ruler's willingness to take any money, knowing that he probably wouldn't be around to pay it off?
if your father has a lot of debt and dies, his assets will be harvested to pay back that debt before you inherit a damned thing.
Those assets that can be harvested. If what remains of the assets can't be converted into money, the bank isn't going to collect much; that's the risk inherent in an such loans. Plenty of dot-com lenders found this out to their chagrin, as they practically gave away Cisco routers.
As to the collection of property, well, any bank should realize that in the event of a governmental failure, their ability to collect will be limited. Therefore, they should make their loans and set their interest accordingly. Providing enormous, low-interest loans to unstable, unrepresentative governments is an extraordinarily stupid business decision, one for which the banks should suffer, not the country itself.
One of the best ways to put these people out of power is not to loan them huge amounts of money which go into arms used to control the local population, and into swiss bank accounts to guarantee the well-being of these leaders.
For all our armchair quarterbacking, it's damn hard to overthrow a well-armed tyranny. And on those rare occasions when it happens, the victors should have the option of building a new stable government. Instead, the first thing that greets the new government is an IMF/World Bank kneecapper, coming to collect the money that the bank foolishly (and unethically) loaned to some tinpot dictator. When the new government can't pay, the IMF either destroys that country's credit (and ability to exist), or forces them to get rid of pesky things like the minimum wage, or child labor laws, in order to a) pay back the accumulating debt that they never agreed to take on, and b) make things cheaper for the West.
Dontcha think it's incumbent on the bank who made the loan to insure that the regime to which they're lending money is stable, and likely to invest it in ways that will pay them back? Or that they should bear a certain amount of responsibility (and risk) if it doesn't happen?
Perhaps the products shouldn't be made available for sale in this country, regardless of who's designing/manufacturing/distributing them.
Make that a part of our trade policy, you'll see Nike changing their business partnerships fast.
Ideally, though, no law would be necessary; public pressure from their customers would be enough to convince them to pick more humane suppliers.
Take a look at some of the robber-baron anti-trust cases from the earlier part of this century. Essentially, one big company started offering services that were controlled by smaller, competing companies. Because the larger company offered the services at an artificially low price, or offered them in combination with necessities like monopoly-controlled train access, or even forced people to use their services as a price of doing business, the smaller companies went out of business (or sold out for peanuts.) Then there were no competing companies, which we (as a society) have decided is a lousy situation. That's why we have anti-trust laws.
What's wrong with systematically including some equivalent of every 3rd party software package with your OS? Well, think about it. What if you were a software vendor, reliant on the Windows-using public. MS has the ability to decimate your company's profit margin by "dumping" a free version of your product to all of your users-- you can't afford to give it out free, and you can't enjoy the sort of default distribution they can, with their monopoly control of the OS.
We have laws against this sort of behavior in the physical world because it leads to ugly monopolies.
In time, any company so targeted will likely go out of business, leaving us with a large company with a broad software and services monopoly, which either abuses customers, or gets spectacularly broken up. The goal of this case is to avoid those two messy outcomes.
I will put my money on two courts to determine this, not danheskett and his unique reading of the law.
That's the most unbelievably idiotic thesis I've ever heard. Essentially, you're saying that the Clinton administration wanted Microsoft active politically... even if any moron could see that the benefit would most likely go to the opposing party?
Of course Microsoft is giving some dough to both sides... But make no mistake. Microsoft knew that (even if they did contribute) the Gore campaign was not where their bread was buttered. A ten year old child could tell you that the Republican party was a better prospect for a large business looking to avoid gov't intervention.
And yet the Clinton administration made an enemy of an extremely wealthy corporation just so they could get them to fund the political opposition? That's inane.
Maybe the DOJ was actually doing something right, even though it was politically dangerous. Maybe two courts of varying ideologies have essentially agreed that Microsoft is a monopoly, and abuses that power. Of course, you could ignore all that and just make stuff up...
The upshot of the above is that they happen on average once every 2.5 years, as the average moon lasts 29.5 days.
However, they rarely happen on Halloween... Apparently.
Quite a few friends of mine have Verizon DSL, and are forced to live with PPPoE rather than straight Ethernet w/ DHCP. Therefore, they have to use PPPoE drivers and Windows-only registration software (which fortunately I think you only have to run once when you get the line.)
Verizon's a big company, though, and apparently they're not forcing this on all of their users (yet.) My apologies. But keep your eyes open...
As the articles mention, they have a problem with both features. And the automatic strip-out feature. I think they realize that sharing free TV programs alone may not be the deadliest accusation, especially if there's a limit on the number of shares.