I am purely amazed that at this juncture in the MS-DOJ trial proceedings that M$ would engage in such a negative way on such a public forum.
Why would you be surprised? Can a leopard change its spots? For a bunch of cynical M$ hating bastards, Slashdotters seem to be perpetually surprised by the antics of the beast. You would think people would actually pay attention and learn from the past. Doh! Silly boy, this is America, if we ignore the past, then we get to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
How many of you saw "Pirates of Silicon Valley?" Yeah, I know its a movie and not real life, but it serves to illustrate a point. At the end of the movie as Jobs is debuting the Mac, and one of his people comes back from the far-east with a MS Windows computer, he berates Chairman Bill for suckering him. Jobs even goes on to say "our stuff is better." Bill's response? He simply points to his Windows computer and says "It doesn't matter." His stuff was already there, available. And that is what won the battle.
Currently, they are, according to MS, waging the war on piracy. Much like the war on drugs, or anything else a big corporation or the government turn their attention to these days, some innocents get caught in the crossfire. But they want you to believe that this is acceptable because they are trying to stamp out piracy (or insert convenient 'evil-o-the-week') and they mean well. No they do, piracy is such an evil thing (after all, if it wasn't for piracy robbing Chairman Bill of his just due, he might have purchased the country by now and done away with all these pesky little freedom things).
Alright, so thats a little out there, but the point is still valid. It doesn't matter if what they are doing is wrong. Its done. Sure there are a lot of people on/. that think this is wrong. There are probably lots of people in other places who think this is wrong. And the DOJ and judge whats his name might agree with us. So what? Will it change anything? Will M$ stop using these tactics? Nope. Will splitting up the company stop them from using these tactics? Nope. What can we do... well, I don't know.
First, let me say I think the response from the Slashttorneys is interesting, but not what I expected, but IANAL. I also think the Devil's Advocate did a nice job.
I really think this issue revolves around 2 things. ... our copyrighted Kerberos specification has been posted on Slashdot for 16 days now, for as you put it, "commentary and criticism", yet there has been no discussion whatsoever of its technical merits. The only commentary and criticism we are aware of relate to the user license itself, not the specification.
Slashdot is, most prominently, an open source advocacy community. While a large number of the members of this community are programmers, hackers, coders, developers or however they may be called. They don't come to Slashdot just to find answers to technical questions, they come to discuss issues. This issue, to a lot of people at Slashdot, is about MS attempting to engulf an open standard. Face it, once MS changes something, those changes become pervasive. Isn't that what this whole monopoly case is about. MS adopts a new standard and the whole industry moves with them. They use their power of Windows to change everything to meet their needs. They call this "innovation." Its not surprising for Slashdotters to want to talk about your attempts to engulf an open standard. That offends a lot of people around here.
The other thing this is about is whether Slashdot is to be held responsible for one of its users. Granted, this is a pretty specific case involving "trade secrets." Is Slashdot accountable for the actions of its users?
Until there is a concentrated demand from the public for security...
Well, there won't be. The public in America is notoriously apathetic towards anything that does not directly affect them. While credit card fraud of any kind does have an impact on them, its not one they can see or feel for themselves. They won't care till its their credit card/identity that gets swiped and it is their life/credit that is all screwed up.
So maybe the best thing would be for someone to swipe a huge Visa database and start doing credit card fraud on a massive basis...
compulsory (km-pul's-re) adj. 1. Obligatory; required: a compulsory examination.
If I purchase shrinkwrapped software off the shelf and do not have the opportunity to review the license beforehand, is this not a compulsory license?
While I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't finished reading (let alone interpreting) the entire thing, it would seem to me this would not apply to any over the counter (be it a bricks and mortor counter or an e-counter) purchase.
I think the largest problem the geek community faces in getting the layperson (including lawyers and judges) to understand technology is language. While geeks as a group are generally very intelligent and have an excellent grasp of the languages they speak, most don't have the ability to translate that into ideas the layperson can understand. Working on a helpdesk I run into this problem constantly, and quite frankly, most of the people I work with don't have the skills necessary to make people understand. Sure, they can walk someone thru fixing a problem, but 90% of the time the person on the other end has no idea what just happened.
As a comunity, geeks need to take the time to find ways to explain our toys in a way the average person can understand. Not the average user, the average person. We can never win the war if we ignore the average J. Q. Public walking down the street. They might understand that Amazon is a book/video/z store, but do they know why they should not be allowed to patent the 1-click ordering technology? Probably not. Sure you can try to explain it to them, but unless you give them an analogy they can understand, they never will. So what analogy works for something like this? Well, what if Random House (or DelRey or Tor etc) had been allowed to patent/copyright the paperback book? Think about it...
The procedure you are thinking of is an intra-ocular contect lens. They cut a little opening in the eye and insert the lens. Below is two quotes from mining co about two new surgeries for vision correction. Both are relatively new.
The first is a flexible, inert, circular ring that is implanted in the periphery of the cornea. It changes the shape of the cornea without any surrounding inflammation or scarring. It's advantage is the ring can be removed at any time, leaving the cornea back in its original state. It is in preliminary testing with results encouraging so far.
The second procedure is an implantable contact lens. Instead of wearing a contact lens on the outside of the eye, with all the care and risks involved with that, a similar lens is placed inside the eye. It unlike other procedures, would be theoretically effective for any type of refractive error (myopia, hyperopia, or astigmatism). It would give instant results, again with the ability to remove the lens should it become necessary. It is also in preliminary testing with very good results to date. This will be scrutinized more thoroughly because it will be the only refractive surgery to involve entering inside the eye, risking the possibility of infection.
Both paragraphs above copied from http://ophthalmology.about.com/health/medicine/oph thalmology/library/weekly/aa072197.htm without permission.
Genetically engineered farm products give me the screaming willies for several reasons. I recently read Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" about chemical/pesticide misuse/poisoning in our environment. While not exactly relevent to the genetic engineering of crops, it raises several points to consider, especially concerning the delicate balance of nature.
In our rush to "improve" our food production, we have continually rushed into solutions which are not fully understood. In the realms of pesticides, we have time and again sprayed pesticides, or even herbicides, as a solution to a problem without taking into consideration the effect it will have in the environment as a whole. Throughout the past 50 years, pesticides have been widely sprayed to control a perceived insect infestation. The sprayings have had disastrous effects on the bird and fish populations in the areas sprayed. In our attempt to eliminate one problem, we have created another.
Genetically engineering crops to resist an insect or disease sounds like such a good idea. But what happens when the insects that normally feed on this crop turn their attention to another crop? What happens when the disease that the crop was created to be resistant to mutates? Do we have to spend billions of dollars to re-engineer the crop to be resistant to the new strains? Man is the only creature on the planet that seeks to subdue rather than trying to acheive a natural balance with nature. These forays into engineered crops will not be, I fear, the panacea we believe, but will be a short term solution to a problem we have brought upon ourselves.
Nature adapts. Man overcomes natures adaptation. Nature will adapt again. Whether it is a disease that is resistant to the antibiotics we throw against it, or an insect that is resistant to every chemical we can create. Man does not have the ability to adapt to its environment as quickly as a disease or insect population, so we seek to override the laws of nature. While this works in the short term, mother nature will continue to adapt.
Yes, the sheep will probably go for the genetic engineering. Anything they can get that means they can have better children without having to put any thought into it. Anything they can but to make their children better will go over big. It means the parents can produce better children without having to put any effort into being better parents. Most parents today are pretty sucky when it comes to raising kids (yeah its a generalisation, DWI). Adding genetic engineering of unborn children to the world will not make better people, just better DNA.
Probably the most disturbing thing about this, is how people don't stop to consider that nobody is perfect. The universe doesn't make perfect people, or perfect animals, or perfect viruses or perfect anythings. If we had genetic engineering 125 years ago, would we have had an Albert Einstein? How about Stephen Hawking? Granted, it might have been interesting to see what Hawking could do if he didn't have to live the way he does. But, would he still be the same man? If Einstein hadn't been told he was an idiot as a child, he might have gone on to a nice career as a engineer, or a doctor or lawyer, and might never have been working as a patent clerk.
I guess the point is this : If there are no obstacles to rise over, will anyone care to try harder, to do more?
Slashdot Mirror
I am purely amazed that at this juncture in the MS-DOJ trial proceedings that M$ would engage in such a negative way on such a public forum.
/. that think this is wrong. There are probably lots of people in other places who think this is wrong. And the DOJ and judge whats his name might agree with us. So what? Will it change anything? Will M$ stop using these tactics? Nope. Will splitting up the company stop them from using these tactics? Nope. What can we do ... well, I don't know.
Why would you be surprised? Can a leopard change its spots? For a bunch of cynical M$ hating bastards, Slashdotters seem to be perpetually surprised by the antics of the beast. You would think people would actually pay attention and learn from the past. Doh! Silly boy, this is America, if we ignore the past, then we get to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
How many of you saw "Pirates of Silicon Valley?" Yeah, I know its a movie and not real life, but it serves to illustrate a point. At the end of the movie as Jobs is debuting the Mac, and one of his people comes back from the far-east with a MS Windows computer, he berates Chairman Bill for suckering him. Jobs even goes on to say "our stuff is better." Bill's response? He simply points to his Windows computer and says "It doesn't matter." His stuff was already there, available. And that is what won the battle.
Currently, they are, according to MS, waging the war on piracy. Much like the war on drugs, or anything else a big corporation or the government turn their attention to these days, some innocents get caught in the crossfire. But they want you to believe that this is acceptable because they are trying to stamp out piracy (or insert convenient 'evil-o-the-week') and they mean well. No they do, piracy is such an evil thing (after all, if it wasn't for piracy robbing Chairman Bill of his just due, he might have purchased the country by now and done away with all these pesky little freedom things).
Alright, so thats a little out there, but the point is still valid. It doesn't matter if what they are doing is wrong. Its done. Sure there are a lot of people on
First, let me say I think the response from the Slashttorneys is interesting, but not what I expected, but IANAL. I also think the Devil's Advocate did a nice job.
... our copyrighted Kerberos specification has been posted on Slashdot for 16 days now, for as you put it, "commentary and criticism", yet there has been no discussion whatsoever of its technical merits. The only commentary and criticism we are aware of relate to the user license itself, not the specification.
...
I really think this issue revolves around 2 things.
Slashdot is, most prominently, an open source advocacy community. While a large number of the members of this community are programmers, hackers, coders, developers or however they may be called. They don't come to Slashdot just to find answers to technical questions, they come to discuss issues. This issue, to a lot of people at Slashdot, is about MS attempting to engulf an open standard. Face it, once MS changes something, those changes become pervasive. Isn't that what this whole monopoly case is about. MS adopts a new standard and the whole industry moves with them. They use their power of Windows to change everything to meet their needs. They call this "innovation." Its not surprising for Slashdotters to want to talk about your attempts to engulf an open standard. That offends a lot of people around here.
The other thing this is about is whether Slashdot is to be held responsible for one of its users. Granted, this is a pretty specific case involving "trade secrets." Is Slashdot accountable for the actions of its users?
Just a few thoughts
Until there is a concentrated demand from the public for security ...
Well, there won't be. The public in America is notoriously apathetic towards anything that does not directly affect them. While credit card fraud of any kind does have an impact on them, its not one they can see or feel for themselves. They won't care till its their credit card/identity that gets swiped and it is their life/credit that is all screwed up.
So maybe the best thing would be for someone to swipe a huge Visa database and start doing credit card fraud on a massive basis...
In reading the text of the Nov 1, 1999 draft of UCITA, I noticed this :
[SUBPART B. GENERAL SCOPE AND TERMS]
SECTION 103. SCOPE; EXCLUSIONS.
(d) This [Act] does not apply to:
(3) a compulsory license
From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition Copyright © 1992, 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. (via gurunet)
compulsory (km-pul's-re) adj.
1. Obligatory; required: a compulsory examination.
If I purchase shrinkwrapped software off the shelf and do not have the opportunity to review the license beforehand, is this not a compulsory license?
While I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't finished reading (let alone interpreting) the entire thing, it would seem to me this would not apply to any over the counter (be it a bricks and mortor counter or an e-counter) purchase.
I think the largest problem the geek community faces in getting the layperson (including lawyers and judges) to understand technology is language. While geeks as a group are generally very intelligent and have an excellent grasp of the languages they speak, most don't have the ability to translate that into ideas the layperson can understand. Working on a helpdesk I run into this problem constantly, and quite frankly, most of the people I work with don't have the skills necessary to make people understand. Sure, they can walk someone thru fixing a problem, but 90% of the time the person on the other end has no idea what just happened.
...
As a comunity, geeks need to take the time to find ways to explain our toys in a way the average person can understand. Not the average user, the average person. We can never win the war if we ignore the average J. Q. Public walking down the street. They might understand that Amazon is a book/video/z store, but do they know why they should not be allowed to patent the 1-click ordering technology? Probably not. Sure you can try to explain it to them, but unless you give them an analogy they can understand, they never will. So what analogy works for something like this? Well, what if Random House (or DelRey or Tor etc) had been allowed to patent/copyright the paperback book? Think about it
The procedure you are thinking of is an intra-ocular contect lens. They cut a little opening in the eye and insert the lens. Below is two quotes from mining co about two new surgeries for vision correction. Both are relatively new.
h thalmology/library/weekly/aa072197.htm without permission.
The first is a flexible, inert, circular ring that is implanted in the periphery of the cornea. It changes the shape of the cornea without any surrounding inflammation or scarring. It's advantage is the ring can be removed at any time, leaving the cornea back in its original state. It is in preliminary testing with results encouraging so far.
The second procedure is an implantable contact lens. Instead of wearing a contact lens on the outside of the eye, with all the care and risks involved with that, a similar lens is placed inside the eye. It unlike other procedures, would be theoretically effective for any type of refractive error (myopia, hyperopia, or astigmatism). It would give instant results, again with the ability to remove the lens should it become necessary. It is also in preliminary testing with very good results to date. This will be scrutinized more thoroughly because it will be the only refractive surgery to involve entering inside the eye, risking the possibility of infection.
Both paragraphs above copied from http://ophthalmology.about.com/health/medicine/op
I hope that clarifies
Genetically engineered farm products give me the screaming willies for several reasons. I recently read Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" about chemical/pesticide misuse/poisoning in our environment. While not exactly relevent to the genetic engineering of crops, it raises several points to consider, especially concerning the delicate balance of nature.
In our rush to "improve" our food production, we have continually rushed into solutions which are not fully understood. In the realms of pesticides, we have time and again sprayed pesticides, or even herbicides, as a solution to a problem without taking into consideration the effect it will have in the environment as a whole. Throughout the past 50 years, pesticides have been widely sprayed to control a perceived insect infestation. The sprayings have had disastrous effects on the bird and fish populations in the areas sprayed. In our attempt to eliminate one problem, we have created another.
Genetically engineering crops to resist an insect or disease sounds like such a good idea. But what happens when the insects that normally feed on this crop turn their attention to another crop? What happens when the disease that the crop was created to be resistant to mutates? Do we have to spend billions of dollars to re-engineer the crop to be resistant to the new strains? Man is the only creature on the planet that seeks to subdue rather than trying to acheive a natural balance with nature. These forays into engineered crops will not be, I fear, the panacea we believe, but will be a short term solution to a problem we have brought upon ourselves.
Nature adapts. Man overcomes natures adaptation. Nature will adapt again. Whether it is a disease that is resistant to the antibiotics we throw against it, or an insect that is resistant to every chemical we can create. Man does not have the ability to adapt to its environment as quickly as a disease or insect population, so we seek to override the laws of nature. While this works in the short term, mother nature will continue to adapt.
Couple of quick comments ...
Yes, the sheep will probably go for the genetic engineering. Anything they can get that means they can have better children without having to put any thought into it. Anything they can but to make their children better will go over big. It means the parents can produce better children without having to put any effort into being better parents. Most parents today are pretty sucky when it comes to raising kids (yeah its a generalisation, DWI). Adding genetic engineering of unborn children to the world will not make better people, just better DNA.
Probably the most disturbing thing about this, is how people don't stop to consider that nobody is perfect. The universe doesn't make perfect people, or perfect animals, or perfect viruses or perfect anythings. If we had genetic engineering 125 years ago, would we have had an Albert Einstein? How about Stephen Hawking? Granted, it might have been interesting to see what Hawking could do if he didn't have to live the way he does. But, would he still be the same man? If Einstein hadn't been told he was an idiot as a child, he might have gone on to a nice career as a engineer, or a doctor or lawyer, and might never have been working as a patent clerk.
I guess the point is this : If there are no obstacles to rise over, will anyone care to try harder, to do more?