Re:So felons CAN profit from their crimes now?
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Copyrant
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· Score: 2
Why do they limit fines for corporate violations of law? For people, it makes a bit of sense (but only a bit) because the majority of people earn the same order of magnitude of money. But there are corporations with four orders of magnitude difference in their financial position.
In 1890, $10M was a real chunk o'change. In 2000, for a Fortune 500 company, it's chickenfeed. For a Fortune 500 company convicted of antitrust violations and thus full of cash, it's fly food.
The next time Congress puts a maximum penalty clause into a law, they should consider making it a self-adjusting number based on the defendant, such as a percentage of profit or a percentage of gross. That is, make big and little companies hurt equally for equal crimes.
All true, but there is one problem. While the DoJ can request that the US Supreme Court take the case and jump past the appeals courts, the US Supreme Court is under no obligation to take the case.
That is, the Supreme Court can tell the DoJ to shove it through appeals like everybody else.
I don't know the Justices well enough to determine whether they are likely to, but I just know that they can.
There is owning a work, there is owning a copy of a work, and there is leasing a work.
Next to my keyboard is a CD of Devo's Greatest Hits. I do not own Devo's Greatest Hits; if I did, I would get royalty checks off of "Whip it!". But since I bought this at the record store, I own a copy of Devo's Greatest Hits.
Owning a copy has legal significance. I can play it all day long, and Devo can't sue me. I can play it backwards. I can reverse engineer the sheet music. I can convert it to MIDI and rearrange it. I can even copy it onto a cassette tape so that I can play it in my car. I can't play it publicly, I can't make a copy for my friends, and I can't take any derivative work and hand it to others.
Some software companies are trying to eliminate the concept of owning a copy. They say that they are granting you a license to use. This is entirely different. Microsoft wants to tell me that I don't own Windows (I agree; I wouldn't want to), but even that I don't own the copy of Windows that is on the CD that shipped with my computer! They want to tell me that I have limited rights to use the software, less rights than I would have if I owned a copy of the software.
AFAIK, this is all legal posturing and bull. If you make a CD with your copyrighted property on it, and I legally buy it, I have bought a copy of that material. I have a very limited right to copy, but a fairly unlimited right to use.
I don't own my music. I own copies of my music. I don't own most of my software. I believe that I own copies of my software. Some vendors disagree.
I ran into this in '92 or '93; a friend of mine (not a friend of a friend) was the target. The ISP wasn't commercial; it was my college. My friend got letterbombed (I believe for being bisexual, but I'm not certain) in the days before DDOS and before even spam. My college pulled his account to protect themselves.
I am holding back names simply because I don't think that they would appreciate the names being used here. Be assured, though, that this sort of thing did happen, at least once.
I'm missing something then. The US-Canadian border is the friendliest border in the world--you can usually pass through without a passport. Don't we have extradition treaties between these two countries?
If Canada is worried about becoming a Mos Eisley of US fugitives, the Mounties can ship them back to us. If Canada builds a big catapult, I'm sure we can put up a big net in Maine;^>
A EULA, or shrinkwrap agreement, limits how one can use software. It doesn't limit how you can copy the software, because it doesn't have to. Copyright law itself limits how you can copy the software. Handing your CD to a friend to let them install it on their system is not so much a violation of the EULA as a violation of the vendor's copyright. There are a few tricks one can use to "get around" the EULA; I'm not sure how well any of them stand up in court.
The GPL does not attempt to limit how you can use the software. Arguably, it doesn't limit your ability to copy the software; in fact, it enhances it.
Any GPL software is copyrighted, either implicitly or explicitly. Either way, standard copyright rules apply--you can't just make copies and hand them to others. The GPL gives you rights to copy software for others, given that you take on certain responsibilities (such as shipping source with binary).
There is no getting around this. You are not required to agree to GPL terms. If you don't, you must follow standard copyright law. If you decide to ship GPL'd code, your only defense against a copyright violation charge is that you are shipping the code as allowed under the GPL. If you aren't shipping the code per the GPL license, you are shipping the code in violation of copyright laws. No shrinkwrap, no EULA, no DMCA--the law that keeps you from copying the software is the same law that keeps you from copying books or music for other people.
It won't hurt Microsoft that bad, I mean do you really think the breakup of Microsoft is going to make Windows go away? Of course not. There is still too much money to be made.
Who wants to see Windows go away?
I want to see Windows, the Elephant on Roller Skates, go away. I want to see Windows, the Thing that Doesn't Work, go away. The reason that Windows is so bad is that the monopoly means that Microsoft has better ways to make a profit than by improving the quality of Windows. Frankly, (and here, I seperate "quality" from "feature set"). Microsoft knows how to make serious quality software when they want to (amazingly, MS Press has some really good books on making quality software). Windows doesn't stink because MS can't make good software, but because they get a bigger profit by playing their marketroid embrace-and-extend games than by making Windows a quality product.
Cutting down some of Microsoft's monopoly can open up the field to competing OSs, including Linux and Un*x. Such an environment may cause Windows, in any or all its flavors, to choke and die. It may also cause Gates to focus the Windows developers towards improving the quality of the product. If he wants to, he can turn Windows, The Elephant on Roller Skates, into Windows, the Gazelle on Steroids.
I hate Windows, the Elephant on Roller Skates. I'll pay big money for Windows, the Gazelle on Steroids. The trick is to put Windows into a true "evolve or die" situation. Either way, the average joe wins.
Re:A common system should be established
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A Matter Of Trust?
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· Score: 2
For the record, US Federal law prohibits a merchant from charging your card until they ship the product (when it leaves their door, not when it arrives at yours). If they have your money and can't prove that they shipped your product, they are in deep legal kimshi. This law protects you from a merchant not shipping your product. The "auth" system described below protects the merchant from you ordering something, then maxing out your card before they ship it.
When you place an order, the merchant sends an "auth request" through their credit card people. The CC guys do any fraud screening the merchant might want done (verifies that the card is real, not expired, not past due, etc.), and verifies that there is indeed "room" on your card. It also puts a lien on your credit card for the amount of the purchase. The merchant gets an auth code back, unrelated to the credit card data, so that they can wipe the credit card data (think of the auth code as a credit card magic cookie). This whole auth request/auth return takes place in real time (which is why you can get "credit refused" while placing an online order--the auth came back negative). You don't pay for the lien, it doesn't show up on your statement, but it is there and it lowers your effective limit. If I have a $5,000 limit on a card with no debt, and I order a $3,000 laptop, there is only $2000 in "real room" on my card, though I am not officially charged yet. That $3,000 is earmarked in the lien to guarantee to the merchant that they will get paid when they ship the laptop. In the meantime, I will get an "over the limit" refusal if I order another $3,000 laptop before they ship the first one and I pay down my card again.
For the record, auths do not last forever. I belive they go piffle somewhere between 30-90 days if they aren't redeemed.
When the merchant ships the product, they look up that auth code that they got, submit that back to the credit card people, and redeem the auth ("I have auth code 34908792 for $3,000. I shipped the goods. Pay up". The money gets automagically credited to the merchant account.
The merchant gets stuck with the bill. Visa/MC takes no financial risk, since they're just providing the standard and IT structure, not fronting the money (that's why banks issue Visa and MasterCard cards--they are in the business of fronting the cash and risking that you won't pay your bills). The issuing bank takes the nonpayment risk--they lose money if they can't get you to pay--but the merchant takes the fraud risk. AmEx and Discover, since they are both IT and the bank (they front the money) take the nonpayment risk, but I bet merchants still take the fraud risk. Giving merchants the fraud risk makes a sort of sense--it gives them incentive to be careful who they approve.
There are Federal laws protecting the consumer from credit card fraud (you've read the disclaimers about how you are only responsible for so many dollars if your card is stolen). Strangely enough, these laws do not apply to debit cards (the ones that pull from your checking account). If someone steals one of those, they can suck your account dry (and maybe even negative), and even FDIC insurance doesn't protect you. You assume risk for debit card fraud. In a high-risk environment, choose the credit card over the debit card to protect yourself.
BTW, the minimum purchase restriction (I believe it's illegal) isn't a fraud protection--nickel-and-dime fraud is more risky than big-ticket fraud, and takes more effort. Some places have these restrictions because the merchant pays a per-transaction fee (not a per-dollar fee) for processing a credit card purchase. Given that, the transaction fee on a small purchase may outweight the profit margin and cause them to incur a loss.
Re:Visa and MC already have started fixing this
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A Matter Of Trust?
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· Score: 3
Since the extra digits are not embossed, they don't show up on the carbon receipts they use at face-to-face places. This means that someone needs posession of your card to use it over the phone or online.
Without that, someone can go dumpster diving at a department store, come up with a bunch of carbon paper that have been thrown out, and have enough information to use your card over the phone.
BTW, if you use your card someplace that actually uses carbon on credit cards (the big clunky things that make the "kachunka" sound when they run it over your card), there are usually three sheets--your copy, the store copy, and the carbon paper. Ask the cashier for the carbon paper every time, and you protect your card a little bit more.
I happen to work for a company that does online credit card processing, so I've run into some issues. I am not a true authority, since I work at the code level rather than the business level. IANAL, and all that.
Sending a picture? For anime? Suspect trouble! They are willing to either wait for a hardcopy photograph, then pay to file and store it so that they can retrieve it, or they are willing to accept a softcopy and stow that on a disk somewhere. This eats seriously into their cash flow, turns customers away, and is generally a very expensive and ineffective way to do fraud control. If I were a merchant, I might consider measures that invasive if I was dealing with a four-figure purchase, though that wouldn't be my preferred way of doing it. For something under $100, this is the sort of thing that would cause them to lose money on every purchase.
Merchants do have to defend against credit card fraud, however. If you take my card number and buy that anime, when I see the charges, I can dispute them. The anime merchant would end up coughing up the charges; that's the breaks you take when you sign up to accept major credit cards. However, there are online services that do fraud checking.
Electronic fraud screening is available from several vendors, and it can give a merchant an idea as to how risky you are to sell to. Criteria include velocity screening (if your use per day changes drastically, it suspects theft), address checking (you are slightly more risky if the shipping address is not the home address of the cardholder), and how often you do chargebacks (having the credit card company remove a charge versus just getting a return out of the vendor). This has to be cheaper, and more effective, than getting photographs.
If somebody is resorting to photo methods, I have to guess that they either need to take Credit Card 101 or are actively malicious. While I would suspect the former (incompetence before malice), I would still steer clear, from what limited information you have given me.
By agreeing to this limited license, you acknowledge the validity of Apogee's ownership in the Marks and will not contest such ownership or the validity of any registrations of Apogee relating to the Marks. If you acquire any goodwill or reputation in any of the Marks, all such goodwill or reputation will automatically vest in Apogee when and as such goodwill or reputation occurs. You agree to take all actions necessary to effect such vesting.
Let me see if I get this straight.
If I start doing very well in an Apogee game, I am in danger of gaining a reputation for being good at it. If this happens, I must transfer this reputation to Apogee.
How does one go about doing that?!? "No, I didn't rack up three million points, Apogee racked it up on itself".
If you defame the trademark, you lose your license to use the marks. That's fine, you didn't have such a license anyways. You didn't need a license. If you think that Duke Nukem is the MS Bob of games, you can say that, and they can only take away the license that you don't have in the first place.
This is a classic case of lawyers seeing how much they can put over on regular people. Somehow, people don't trust lawyers, but they believe everything that they write in an official-looking document.
And who would own that copyright? The Pope? A group of Rabbis in Jerusalem? Your church? My church? You? Imagine the harm if you gave the copyright to someone who thought he had the True Meaning, but actually didn't.
There are a lot of points that you can't get a group of ministers and preachers to agree with, doubly so if you include Catholics and/or Mormons (being Catholic myself, I am not flaming either). What percentage of Christian preachers and ministers believe in dinosaurs, for instance? How many believe that baptism is required for salvation? How many believe that one can fall after being saved? If you let a committee decide the true and proper use of the Bible, you would end up with some sort of watered-down Christianity where the real Truth would stand no chance.
Besides, which Bible are you copyrighting? King James, New International, The Book, another translation? Or are you copyrighting the originals, assuming that you can find the crypts they are stored in?
Copyrighting the Bible would just allow the copyright holder to bludgeon everyone, Christian and non, not aligned with that holder into legal submission. This might make some sense where there is general consensus as to who is right, but given such consensus, we wouldn't need this copyright. Even if, by chance, the Powers That Be hand the copyright over to exactly the right person or persons, you polarize Christianity into the we-have-the-copyright crowd and the we-don't crowd, and you create a new Schism where the we-don't crowd are at war with the we-have crowd in a way that they wouldn't otherwise.
As a Catholic, I belive that the Pope is the final arbitrer on this world. I still wouldn't hand him the copyright, because it would separate Catholics from other Christians even more so, without making Catholicism one whit more correct. And from my perspective, that's a best-case scenario. Handing the copyright over to someone not perfectly aligned with God (and who is?) would make it even worse.
I suppose you could hand the copyright over to God Himself (considering the books of the Prophets as "works made for hire"?). It wouldn't do much good without God coming down and defending it. As far as I can tell, God has had enough first-hand experience with courtroom drama for one eternity...
The potential for harm is enormous, and can be measured in megasouls. I think this is a Bad Idea.
That all depends on your Windows. Windows 95/98 runs on DOS 7, though Microsoft doesn't want to let you know that. Effectively, DOS is the kernel. NT, and thus W2K, is a different OS with its own kernel, built to run most of the same software.
If you have a dual NT workstation, I'll bet it beats the pants off Win98. 95/98 is usually faster than NT on equivalent hardware (though I can't vouch for Win2K speed), but it takes NT to take advantage of a second CPU. Running Win98 on a dual workstation will leave half your clocks playing pinochle.
Mainframes are known for being very powerful (in IO speed, not necessarily CPU speed), but very unfriendly. Normally, one sets up smaller, more friendly computers that connect to the mainframe, and nobody but the High Priests actually works with the mainframe itself.
Many companies have a huge mainframe investment. They have a lot of money tied up in the hardware, software, and data onboard. Other companies just starting up find that their bandwidth actually requires a mainframe--think of an online stock brokerage or online bank.
Unfortunately, it is really hard to get mainframe people--admins, programmers, and the like. It's a relative cakewalk to get Unix/Linux types.
Linux on the mainframe allows easy access to the mainframe bandwidth and the data already there, as well as better access to a techie base.
Think of it this way: you are running a trading firm (already using a mainframe for trade databases), and you want to become an online trading firm. You need a very powerful web site that can handle heavy bandwidth. that site needs to be able to communicate with a slew of online users (so many that your network guys are installing a T-3 rather than multiple T-1s), and it needs to hit that mainframe database, fast.
Install Linux on that mainframe, compile Apache on it, and build your website onto the mainframe. The web site is now on a machine that can take full advantage of a T-3, and will access the database within the same machine. Effectively, your database connection is TCP over loopback. Finally, you can attract really good sysadmins, programmers, and Web designers because it's easier to find Linux talent than OS/390 talent.
Copyright notices only inform the reader (viewer, listener, etc.) of restrictions that are already in place. There is nothing to agree to; the copyright is enforced by law.
A license agreement, OTOH, is by definition something you either agree to or do not. And a license is a restriction on use, not reading or viewing.
If I own a book, the book has a copyright on it but no license. By law (not agreement), I am forbidden from doing things like ripping out the pages and photocopying it, or scanning it onto the Web. I am expressly forbidden from copying it.
However, there are no end to things I can do with that book. I can give it to somebody. I can lend it out. I can resell it. I can mark it up with a highlighter. I can even use the author's own words against him or her.
Imagine this: I buy a book written by somebody I dislike. I can then write an editorial, tearing his views apart, using little pieces from the book to do so (this is "fair use", so I don't violate copyright law). This is all completely legal.
Now what if he puts something in the introduction: "By reading this book, you agree not to critique, insult, or inconvenience the author in any way".
Guess what? I can do exactly what I intend to do just as if that wasn't in the book. I read the agreement, I am aware of the agreement, but I don't agree with the agreement. Reading a book doesn't require me to agree with anything written in it. There is no law backing that statement up, unless UCITA applies to books as well (and then only in Virginia?).
If there is such a law, we're all in for a world of hurts. Consider the following scenarios.
You go to a movie. The film company got a huge investment from Pepsi. Not only does the movie show a number of people drinking Pepsi products, but an opening crawl before the opening credits states "By watching this film, you agree never to purchase products by the Coca-Cola Company". And if you think that's bad, wait until it comes out on video and they start playing it on transcontinental flights (where you can't walk out of the theatre).
You tune in a Pearl Jam song on the radio. The latest hit has Eddie Vedder singing the chorus "By listening to this song/you agree to not do wrong/to stop paying those bastards/that work at TicketMaster".
And my personal favorite:
By reading this post, the Slashdotter agrees to pay me $20. $30 for Anonymous Cowards.
With regard to stock price, you are right. It wouldn't really matter to Bill Gates if MS' stock price dropped to $1.50 per share on Monday. He's got accountants diversifying his wealth, making sure that he won't go broke.
Actually, it would matter. He wouldn't go broke, but think about it. If M$ goes to $1.50/share, somebody's going to scoop them up right quick, if only to dismantle them.
I doubt that Bill Gates wants to be working for Microsoft, a subsidiary of IBM...
Windows scares me. Windows in the Navy scares me even more. Destroyers are fine, but I don't want to step foot on a minesweeper anymore. If it crashes, the Blue Screen of Death has sharks in it.
From the Gates article: The front line of defense against such sophisticated viruses is a continually evolving computer-operating system that attracts the efforts of eager software developers, Gates said.
That relationship would suffer because the Justice Department's proposal for breaking up the company would result in fewer innovations of Windows programs, he said.
The breakup order also would end improvements to the Internet software in Windows and cripple company efforts to develop a write-on tablet that allows notes to be transferred seamlessly to a personal computer, Gates said.
"The benefits of developing operating systems and applications software under the same roof will increase as new intelligent devices emerge over the next few years," he said.
This solidifies something that has been in the back of my mind for a long time. From the eyes of Slashdot, MS and Gates are evil maurauders hell-bent on collecting their taxes and ruining life for all other software developers. But of course, we rarely see things the ways our adversaries do. I think that the above quotes help me understand why Gates and Microsoft behave the way they do. All below is my take on what Microsoft thinks of itself, not what I directly think of the company.
Microsoft is in it, altruistically, for the end user. Sure, they're not completely altruistic--after all, they have to make a profit like the rest of us. However, they are really trying to give something back to the customer, not screw them over.
To Microsoft, the end user is a computer illeterate whose definition of good software is easy software. They don't want to spend a lot of time understanding the alien machine, just using it.
Furthermore, Microsoft believes that the way to simplify is to homogenize the environment. That is, if you have three different vendors with three different software brands on your desktop, you have to learn three times the stuff.
Microsoft needs their monopoly because they have no other way to provide a homogenous user environment. Third party software pollutes the environment, and makes the machine harder to use. Therefore, Microsoft will do anything and everything in its power to prevent such pollution. This is why it works so hard to foil anyone else's attempt to make significant inroads.
This is what they mean by freedom to innovate. If everybody just left them alone, they could make a beautiful user experience without worrying about fighting off things like Java, Netscape, and Linux.
They're in it for the users.
(now my own takes).
This is completely opposite the Slashdot worldview. Each side thinks that the other is inherantly evil because we can't see eye to eye.
I used to think they were inherently evil. I'm not sure anymore, but I do believe that they are horribly wrongheaded.
Slashdot Mirror
Governments can remain very stupid for very long.
In 1890, $10M was a real chunk o'change. In 2000, for a Fortune 500 company, it's chickenfeed. For a Fortune 500 company convicted of antitrust violations and thus full of cash, it's fly food.
The next time Congress puts a maximum penalty clause into a law, they should consider making it a self-adjusting number based on the defendant, such as a percentage of profit or a percentage of gross. That is, make big and little companies hurt equally for equal crimes.
That is, the Supreme Court can tell the DoJ to shove it through appeals like everybody else.
I don't know the Justices well enough to determine whether they are likely to, but I just know that they can.
Next to my keyboard is a CD of Devo's Greatest Hits. I do not own Devo's Greatest Hits; if I did, I would get royalty checks off of "Whip it!". But since I bought this at the record store, I own a copy of Devo's Greatest Hits.
Owning a copy has legal significance. I can play it all day long, and Devo can't sue me. I can play it backwards. I can reverse engineer the sheet music. I can convert it to MIDI and rearrange it. I can even copy it onto a cassette tape so that I can play it in my car. I can't play it publicly, I can't make a copy for my friends, and I can't take any derivative work and hand it to others.
Some software companies are trying to eliminate the concept of owning a copy. They say that they are granting you a license to use. This is entirely different. Microsoft wants to tell me that I don't own Windows (I agree; I wouldn't want to), but even that I don't own the copy of Windows that is on the CD that shipped with my computer! They want to tell me that I have limited rights to use the software, less rights than I would have if I owned a copy of the software.
AFAIK, this is all legal posturing and bull. If you make a CD with your copyrighted property on it, and I legally buy it, I have bought a copy of that material. I have a very limited right to copy, but a fairly unlimited right to use.
I don't own my music. I own copies of my music. I don't own most of my software. I believe that I own copies of my software. Some vendors disagree.
I am holding back names simply because I don't think that they would appreciate the names being used here. Be assured, though, that this sort of thing did happen, at least once.
If Canada is worried about becoming a Mos Eisley of US fugitives, the Mounties can ship them back to us. If Canada builds a big catapult, I'm sure we can put up a big net in Maine ;^>
A EULA, or shrinkwrap agreement, limits how one can use software. It doesn't limit how you can copy the software, because it doesn't have to. Copyright law itself limits how you can copy the software. Handing your CD to a friend to let them install it on their system is not so much a violation of the EULA as a violation of the vendor's copyright. There are a few tricks one can use to "get around" the EULA; I'm not sure how well any of them stand up in court.
The GPL does not attempt to limit how you can use the software. Arguably, it doesn't limit your ability to copy the software; in fact, it enhances it.
Any GPL software is copyrighted, either implicitly or explicitly. Either way, standard copyright rules apply--you can't just make copies and hand them to others. The GPL gives you rights to copy software for others, given that you take on certain responsibilities (such as shipping source with binary).
There is no getting around this. You are not required to agree to GPL terms. If you don't, you must follow standard copyright law. If you decide to ship GPL'd code, your only defense against a copyright violation charge is that you are shipping the code as allowed under the GPL. If you aren't shipping the code per the GPL license, you are shipping the code in violation of copyright laws. No shrinkwrap, no EULA, no DMCA--the law that keeps you from copying the software is the same law that keeps you from copying books or music for other people.
So then you would have the Moon fighting the Sun over Java? This could be fun...
Who wants to see Windows go away?
I want to see Windows, the Elephant on Roller Skates, go away. I want to see Windows, the Thing that Doesn't Work, go away. The reason that Windows is so bad is that the monopoly means that Microsoft has better ways to make a profit than by improving the quality of Windows. Frankly, (and here, I seperate "quality" from "feature set"). Microsoft knows how to make serious quality software when they want to (amazingly, MS Press has some really good books on making quality software). Windows doesn't stink because MS can't make good software, but because they get a bigger profit by playing their marketroid embrace-and-extend games than by making Windows a quality product.
Cutting down some of Microsoft's monopoly can open up the field to competing OSs, including Linux and Un*x. Such an environment may cause Windows, in any or all its flavors, to choke and die. It may also cause Gates to focus the Windows developers towards improving the quality of the product. If he wants to, he can turn Windows, The Elephant on Roller Skates, into Windows, the Gazelle on Steroids.
I hate Windows, the Elephant on Roller Skates. I'll pay big money for Windows, the Gazelle on Steroids. The trick is to put Windows into a true "evolve or die" situation. Either way, the average joe wins.
When you place an order, the merchant sends an "auth request" through their credit card people. The CC guys do any fraud screening the merchant might want done (verifies that the card is real, not expired, not past due, etc.), and verifies that there is indeed "room" on your card. It also puts a lien on your credit card for the amount of the purchase. The merchant gets an auth code back, unrelated to the credit card data, so that they can wipe the credit card data (think of the auth code as a credit card magic cookie). This whole auth request/auth return takes place in real time (which is why you can get "credit refused" while placing an online order--the auth came back negative). You don't pay for the lien, it doesn't show up on your statement, but it is there and it lowers your effective limit. If I have a $5,000 limit on a card with no debt, and I order a $3,000 laptop, there is only $2000 in "real room" on my card, though I am not officially charged yet. That $3,000 is earmarked in the lien to guarantee to the merchant that they will get paid when they ship the laptop. In the meantime, I will get an "over the limit" refusal if I order another $3,000 laptop before they ship the first one and I pay down my card again.
For the record, auths do not last forever. I belive they go piffle somewhere between 30-90 days if they aren't redeemed.
When the merchant ships the product, they look up that auth code that they got, submit that back to the credit card people, and redeem the auth ("I have auth code 34908792 for $3,000. I shipped the goods. Pay up". The money gets automagically credited to the merchant account.
There are Federal laws protecting the consumer from credit card fraud (you've read the disclaimers about how you are only responsible for so many dollars if your card is stolen). Strangely enough, these laws do not apply to debit cards (the ones that pull from your checking account). If someone steals one of those, they can suck your account dry (and maybe even negative), and even FDIC insurance doesn't protect you. You assume risk for debit card fraud. In a high-risk environment, choose the credit card over the debit card to protect yourself.
BTW, the minimum purchase restriction (I believe it's illegal) isn't a fraud protection--nickel-and-dime fraud is more risky than big-ticket fraud, and takes more effort. Some places have these restrictions because the merchant pays a per-transaction fee (not a per-dollar fee) for processing a credit card purchase. Given that, the transaction fee on a small purchase may outweight the profit margin and cause them to incur a loss.
Without that, someone can go dumpster diving at a department store, come up with a bunch of carbon paper that have been thrown out, and have enough information to use your card over the phone.
BTW, if you use your card someplace that actually uses carbon on credit cards (the big clunky things that make the "kachunka" sound when they run it over your card), there are usually three sheets--your copy, the store copy, and the carbon paper. Ask the cashier for the carbon paper every time, and you protect your card a little bit more.
Sending a picture? For anime? Suspect trouble! They are willing to either wait for a hardcopy photograph, then pay to file and store it so that they can retrieve it, or they are willing to accept a softcopy and stow that on a disk somewhere. This eats seriously into their cash flow, turns customers away, and is generally a very expensive and ineffective way to do fraud control. If I were a merchant, I might consider measures that invasive if I was dealing with a four-figure purchase, though that wouldn't be my preferred way of doing it. For something under $100, this is the sort of thing that would cause them to lose money on every purchase.
Merchants do have to defend against credit card fraud, however. If you take my card number and buy that anime, when I see the charges, I can dispute them. The anime merchant would end up coughing up the charges; that's the breaks you take when you sign up to accept major credit cards. However, there are online services that do fraud checking.
Electronic fraud screening is available from several vendors, and it can give a merchant an idea as to how risky you are to sell to. Criteria include velocity screening (if your use per day changes drastically, it suspects theft), address checking (you are slightly more risky if the shipping address is not the home address of the cardholder), and how often you do chargebacks (having the credit card company remove a charge versus just getting a return out of the vendor). This has to be cheaper, and more effective, than getting photographs.
If somebody is resorting to photo methods, I have to guess that they either need to take Credit Card 101 or are actively malicious. While I would suspect the former (incompetence before malice), I would still steer clear, from what limited information you have given me.
Let me see if I get this straight.
If I start doing very well in an Apogee game, I am in danger of gaining a reputation for being good at it. If this happens, I must transfer this reputation to Apogee.
How does one go about doing that?!? "No, I didn't rack up three million points, Apogee racked it up on itself".
What the...
This is a classic case of lawyers seeing how much they can put over on regular people. Somehow, people don't trust lawyers, but they believe everything that they write in an official-looking document.
There are a lot of points that you can't get a group of ministers and preachers to agree with, doubly so if you include Catholics and/or Mormons (being Catholic myself, I am not flaming either). What percentage of Christian preachers and ministers believe in dinosaurs, for instance? How many believe that baptism is required for salvation? How many believe that one can fall after being saved? If you let a committee decide the true and proper use of the Bible, you would end up with some sort of watered-down Christianity where the real Truth would stand no chance.
Besides, which Bible are you copyrighting? King James, New International, The Book, another translation? Or are you copyrighting the originals, assuming that you can find the crypts they are stored in?
Copyrighting the Bible would just allow the copyright holder to bludgeon everyone, Christian and non, not aligned with that holder into legal submission. This might make some sense where there is general consensus as to who is right, but given such consensus, we wouldn't need this copyright. Even if, by chance, the Powers That Be hand the copyright over to exactly the right person or persons, you polarize Christianity into the we-have-the-copyright crowd and the we-don't crowd, and you create a new Schism where the we-don't crowd are at war with the we-have crowd in a way that they wouldn't otherwise.
As a Catholic, I belive that the Pope is the final arbitrer on this world. I still wouldn't hand him the copyright, because it would separate Catholics from other Christians even more so, without making Catholicism one whit more correct. And from my perspective, that's a best-case scenario. Handing the copyright over to someone not perfectly aligned with God (and who is?) would make it even worse.
I suppose you could hand the copyright over to God Himself (considering the books of the Prophets as "works made for hire"?). It wouldn't do much good without God coming down and defending it. As far as I can tell, God has had enough first-hand experience with courtroom drama for one eternity...
The potential for harm is enormous, and can be measured in megasouls. I think this is a Bad Idea.
If you have a dual NT workstation, I'll bet it beats the pants off Win98. 95/98 is usually faster than NT on equivalent hardware (though I can't vouch for Win2K speed), but it takes NT to take advantage of a second CPU. Running Win98 on a dual workstation will leave half your clocks playing pinochle.
Many companies have a huge mainframe investment. They have a lot of money tied up in the hardware, software, and data onboard. Other companies just starting up find that their bandwidth actually requires a mainframe--think of an online stock brokerage or online bank.
Unfortunately, it is really hard to get mainframe people--admins, programmers, and the like. It's a relative cakewalk to get Unix/Linux types.
Linux on the mainframe allows easy access to the mainframe bandwidth and the data already there, as well as better access to a techie base.
Think of it this way: you are running a trading firm (already using a mainframe for trade databases), and you want to become an online trading firm. You need a very powerful web site that can handle heavy bandwidth. that site needs to be able to communicate with a slew of online users (so many that your network guys are installing a T-3 rather than multiple T-1s), and it needs to hit that mainframe database, fast.
Install Linux on that mainframe, compile Apache on it, and build your website onto the mainframe. The web site is now on a machine that can take full advantage of a T-3, and will access the database within the same machine. Effectively, your database connection is TCP over loopback. Finally, you can attract really good sysadmins, programmers, and Web designers because it's easier to find Linux talent than OS/390 talent.
Ahhh, this explains much. Corporations are immortal. Now I understand Bill Gates' constant mutterings of "there can be only one"...
Copyright notices only inform the reader (viewer, listener, etc.) of restrictions that are already in place. There is nothing to agree to; the copyright is enforced by law.
A license agreement, OTOH, is by definition something you either agree to or do not. And a license is a restriction on use, not reading or viewing.
If I own a book, the book has a copyright on it but no license. By law (not agreement), I am forbidden from doing things like ripping out the pages and photocopying it, or scanning it onto the Web. I am expressly forbidden from copying it.
However, there are no end to things I can do with that book. I can give it to somebody. I can lend it out. I can resell it. I can mark it up with a highlighter. I can even use the author's own words against him or her.
Imagine this: I buy a book written by somebody I dislike. I can then write an editorial, tearing his views apart, using little pieces from the book to do so (this is "fair use", so I don't violate copyright law). This is all completely legal.
Now what if he puts something in the introduction: "By reading this book, you agree not to critique, insult, or inconvenience the author in any way".
Guess what? I can do exactly what I intend to do just as if that wasn't in the book. I read the agreement, I am aware of the agreement, but I don't agree with the agreement. Reading a book doesn't require me to agree with anything written in it. There is no law backing that statement up, unless UCITA applies to books as well (and then only in Virginia?).
If there is such a law, we're all in for a world of hurts. Consider the following scenarios.
You go to a movie. The film company got a huge investment from Pepsi. Not only does the movie show a number of people drinking Pepsi products, but an opening crawl before the opening credits states "By watching this film, you agree never to purchase products by the Coca-Cola Company". And if you think that's bad, wait until it comes out on video and they start playing it on transcontinental flights (where you can't walk out of the theatre).
You tune in a Pearl Jam song on the radio. The latest hit has Eddie Vedder singing the chorus "By listening to this song/you agree to not do wrong/to stop paying those bastards/that work at TicketMaster".
And my personal favorite:
By reading this post, the Slashdotter agrees to pay me $20. $30 for Anonymous Cowards.
Actually, it would matter. He wouldn't go broke, but think about it. If M$ goes to $1.50/share, somebody's going to scoop them up right quick, if only to dismantle them.
I doubt that Bill Gates wants to be working for Microsoft, a subsidiary of IBM...
Windows scares me. Windows in the Navy scares me even more. Destroyers are fine, but I don't want to step foot on a minesweeper anymore. If it crashes, the Blue Screen of Death has sharks in it.
Clicks have more legal weight than signatures.
Somebody should have told Dark Helmet that.
That relationship would suffer because the Justice Department's proposal for breaking up the company would result in fewer innovations of Windows programs, he said.
The breakup order also would end improvements to the Internet software in Windows and cripple company efforts to develop a write-on tablet that allows notes to be transferred seamlessly to a personal computer, Gates said.
"The benefits of developing operating systems and applications software under the same roof will increase as new intelligent devices emerge over the next few years," he said.
This solidifies something that has been in the back of my mind for a long time. From the eyes of Slashdot, MS and Gates are evil maurauders hell-bent on collecting their taxes and ruining life for all other software developers. But of course, we rarely see things the ways our adversaries do. I think that the above quotes help me understand why Gates and Microsoft behave the way they do. All below is my take on what Microsoft thinks of itself, not what I directly think of the company.
Microsoft is in it, altruistically, for the end user. Sure, they're not completely altruistic--after all, they have to make a profit like the rest of us. However, they are really trying to give something back to the customer, not screw them over.
To Microsoft, the end user is a computer illeterate whose definition of good software is easy software. They don't want to spend a lot of time understanding the alien machine, just using it.
Furthermore, Microsoft believes that the way to simplify is to homogenize the environment. That is, if you have three different vendors with three different software brands on your desktop, you have to learn three times the stuff.
Microsoft needs their monopoly because they have no other way to provide a homogenous user environment. Third party software pollutes the environment, and makes the machine harder to use. Therefore, Microsoft will do anything and everything in its power to prevent such pollution. This is why it works so hard to foil anyone else's attempt to make significant inroads.
This is what they mean by freedom to innovate. If everybody just left them alone, they could make a beautiful user experience without worrying about fighting off things like Java, Netscape, and Linux.
They're in it for the users.
(now my own takes).
This is completely opposite the Slashdot worldview. Each side thinks that the other is inherantly evil because we can't see eye to eye.
I used to think they were inherently evil. I'm not sure anymore, but I do believe that they are horribly wrongheaded.