Then allow me to edit my original statement as follows..
The 'general advice' you should give to businesses is that they need to make sure that their attorneys read and understand....
The problem is that this agency seems to think there is (or should be) some sort of blanket advice that they can give businesses, and they think it is (or should be) 'you arent allowed to copy any software'. And we of course know that isn't true (nor is the converse). Blanket statements concerning wether you can copy software are not valid - one must refer to the terms of the license under which one obtained the software.
Yes but "they" (some uk government agency) isnt who should be doing that. "They" (some uk govt agency) needs to advise the business to consult the licenses for any software they use/own/copy/whatever *themselves*.. Now of course, that makes "them" (some uk govt agency) less meaningfull in the whole process, so they probably dont like that.
"If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation, as it is difficult for us to give general advice to businesses over what is/is not permitted."
Here is the crux, Miss, what is/is not permitted regarding software is entirely a function of the license that is agreed to by the involved parties. There is no blanket set of rules - what one party's license prohibits, another party's license may encourage or require. The 'general advice' you should give to businesses is that they need to read and understand the licenses associated with whatever software that they are involved with (something you apparently had difficulty doing yourself)
In the 1950's, the engineers didn't have the benefit of several decades of experience and firsthand knowledge of how their designs would work (or not).
I think this isn't so much a repeat, as it is that the original predictions were a little early. Go read the wiki page yourself.
MS and a competitive market where quality software can be successful are direct opposites. MS could *not* be successfull in a truly competitive market, and a truly competitive market cannot be truly be had until MS no longer has a monopoly over it. MS is far better at making money than they are at making software.
Windows is only be considered to be a viable Internet server platform by persons who fall into one (or more) of the below categories.
1. Complete morons/feeble minded persons who assume becuase MS and Bill Gates have a lot of money that they must be better
2. People who dont know anything else, and whom wouldnt be considered 'professionals' except for the MS knowledge they have, and recognize that they would be useless if their MS 'expertise' was no longer relevant
3. Executives who've made the decision to go with MS after being wined and dined by the MS sales team
4. People that think that 'sales' is even *remotely* a valid measurement of the success of an OS. The purpose of software isn't to make money for the company that sells it, the purpose of software is to do what the person installing/deploying it wants it to do.
1. Require job postings to specify the actual location where the employee being sought will be working. (One state site I know is subject to employers geo-spamming their postings, advertising the job in many different regions of the state)
2. Absolutely prohibit (or at least actively seperate) anything that isnt *actual*, *conventional* employment. (Eg, the ones where you have to pay for 'memberships', or other work-at-home type scams).
3. Prohibit employers from demanding SSN's and other secure private data online - in fact, SSN's should only really need to be provided *after* a job offer (possibly conditional on bg checks that require the SSN or other similar critera) has actually been made... Im sure theres more, but thats all I can think of right now..
Not all that odd, really, since there is no TFA. The link goes to the login form for some private site, and there seems to NOT BE A WAY to actually click through to the article.
The link given goes to the login form for some private site - If/. cant provide a open, public link to a story, then dont post it.
It would be really nice if articles that linked to private sites culd be marked somehow, and/. users could check a pref to supress their appearance completely.
I don't know who you are talking to, but I personally never voted for anything to do with Microsoft. In fact I basically started completely boycotting MS entirely sometime around 1995 - up to then I had been using MS-DOS with DesQview (Windows 3.1 was a horrific POS.) Once I realized the days of dial-up unix shell access to the Internet was dying and IP over dialip (aka PPP) was coming (for which DOS support was either missing or abysmal), I moved entirely into the Free (yes, thats a capital F, see gnu.org) unix world, and have looked back only with laughter and pity for those that stuck (or were stuck) with MS.
There is no need to compile such a list - by default *all* email addresses are on it, and to not be a spammer you only send to those addresses that have specifically opted *IN* to receiving your email (and only then when you have confirmed that the owner of the address is the one doing the opting, to avoid third-parties from signing you up)
1. If the recipient was expecting the email from HfH (or whoever), and wanted it, they will notice they are no longer getting it, and will call AOL and complain. Less savvy ones may be brushed off, but some may get indignant and demand that AOL stop filtering mail that they want to receive, regardless of wether the sender paid or not.
2. If the recipient was NOT expecting the email and will miss it if it does not arrive, then they may well consider that it *was* spam, regardless of wether the sender is 'legit'.
3. If a customer receives spam from one of these pay-to-spam companies, and continues to receive it, even after informing AOL that it is spam, then hopefully they will complain as well, or maybe filter it individually (if AOL offers that)
Wether a message is spam or not has *NOTHING* to do with wether the company sending it is trying to scam the recipient or not, and nothing to do with wether they are trying to sell crap or wether they are selling great products, or wether they really are a charitable company or not, and especially not wether or not they *paid* your email provider for the right to email you. Only the individual receiving a message can determine if it is spam or not.
If AOL is accepting money from spammers, perhaps they can offer discounted rates to customers of theirs that agree to receive the spam.
They do. Just log in to your google account and click 'Search History' (at the top), then 'Remove items' (on the left) - As well as the ability to remove individual searches or clicked results, there is also a "Clear entire Search History" option.
I would think it would be obvious that anyone who was a 'hobbyist' programmer was employed doing something other than programming, or had some other source of income. Thats what makes them a 'hobbyist' - if they wrote software for a living, then they wouldn't be a hobbyist anymore, now would they?
No, neither RMS nor any other sane FS advocate demands that *you* give away *your* program, or that others be allowed to do so. However, we would demand that no one bne forced to use *your* program, that others be allowed to write their own program which may very well do the same thing, and that if you *choose* to use code from *his* (RMS) program in *your* program, then you must allow anyone that you provide your program to a complete copy of the source code used to built your program.
The GPL is not viral, in that nothing *ever* forces you to allow it into your program. It is only if *you* choose to use *someone elses's* code in your program, that that person has licensed to you under the GPL, that you then become bound by the GPL. You *always* have the choice to *NOT* use other people's GPL code, and license (or not) your code or programs however you want.
The concept is that if you want to benefit from the work of programmers who give away their code for free, you must also be of benefit to those programmers. You can choose to participate, or not. But you have neither the legal nor moral right to demand to profit from their work without your own full participation.
I dont think peterpi was suggesting that "Open Source" was piracy. I am an advocate of Free Software myself, and I also would not recommend pirating proprietary software. I'm also unsure how you got the impression that he was rich or used Windows.
(The point is that rather than stealing (*OR* buying) the closed-source crap, use software that actually encourages you to share it)
If I were an AOL user, I would demand an option to send mail from anyone that had *paid* to send me mail to 'junk' (or outright refuse it) unless I specifically chose to accept it.
Similarly, I would demand the right to have mail that I *wanted* to receive to be accepted and delivered normally, regardless of wether the sender had paid AOL.
Thankfully, the odds of my ever using AOL for email are about the same as George Bush and Jerry Falwell flying to pluto together in a Cessna and getting a date with a pair of alien prostitutes with 6 legs and 2 heads.
Gee, I wouldnt want anything bad to happen to your PC. You know, you really shouldnt be running Windows on that, or anything from Microsoft - you're just asked for one of around a million or so various trojan horses or other exploits that turn your PC into a spam or porn relay, steal your private data, or at best just severely cripple its performance.
*First* support the standards/specifications (eg, W3C) without detecting specific software or versions (or if you must detect, then follow the spec if you dont recognize what you detect, or the detection fails). That will automatically support anything that exists or that comes to exist in the future that is standards compliant.
Then, if you *must*, support any specific non-standards-compliant browsers which for some reason are still in popular use, in a 'bare minimum' sort of way - eg, so that someone using one can at least see and navigate the basic information on the site.
Think of it this way - tv broadcasters don't have to 'support' specific brands or models of tv sets - they transmit a signal in the standard, documented manner, and any tv set that can receive the standard signal works just fine. TV sets that are unable or unwilling to receive the standard signal, dont get much market share.
What I want is some wireless broadband tech that is capable of working without LOS, over appreciable distances. The telco monopolies are never going to give up their stranglehold on their copper, and even if they someday drag fiber around everywhere you know they are gojng to charge through the nose for it, and still keep it under tight monopoly control. Its time to bypass them,
For the record, no company that should be legitimately consider an ISP would do this - only the telecom giants (phone as well as cable) that know they have a stranglehold on wired broadband do this sort of thing.
Unless regulators finally get a clue, the only hope we have is some major disruptive advancement in wireless technology. One that didnt require LOS, expensive equipment, worked over long distances, etc..
Slashdot Mirror
Then allow me to edit my original statement as follows..
The 'general advice' you should give to businesses is that they need to make sure that their attorneys read and understand....
The problem is that this agency seems to think there is (or should be) some sort of blanket advice that they can give businesses, and they think it is (or should be) 'you arent allowed to copy any software'. And we of course know that isn't true (nor is the converse). Blanket statements concerning wether you can copy software are not valid - one must refer to the terms of the license under which one obtained the software.
Yes but "they" (some uk government agency) isnt who should be doing that. "They" (some uk govt agency) needs to advise the business to consult the licenses for any software they use/own/copy/whatever *themselves*.. Now of course, that makes "them" (some uk govt agency) less meaningfull in the whole process, so they probably dont like that.
"If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation, as it is difficult for us to give general advice to businesses over what is/is not permitted."
Here is the crux, Miss, what is/is not permitted regarding software is entirely a function of the license that is agreed to by the involved parties. There is no blanket set of rules - what one party's license prohibits, another party's license may encourage or require. The 'general advice' you should give to businesses is that they need to read and understand the licenses associated with whatever software that they are involved with (something you apparently had difficulty doing yourself)
In the 1950's, the engineers didn't have the benefit of several decades of experience and firsthand knowledge of how their designs would work (or not).
I think this isn't so much a repeat, as it is that the original predictions were a little early. Go read the wiki page yourself.
Read this site. Read *all* of it, end to end.
MS and a competitive market where quality software can be successful are direct opposites. MS could *not* be successfull in a truly competitive market, and a truly competitive market cannot be truly be had until MS no longer has a monopoly over it. MS is far better at making money than they are at making software.
http://www.msversus.org/book/print/1
Windows is only be considered to be a viable Internet server platform by persons who fall into one (or more) of the below categories.
1. Complete morons/feeble minded persons who assume becuase MS and Bill Gates have a lot of money that they must be better
2. People who dont know anything else, and whom wouldnt be considered 'professionals' except for the MS knowledge they have, and recognize that they would be useless if their MS 'expertise' was no longer relevant
3. Executives who've made the decision to go with MS after being wined and dined by the MS sales team
4. People that think that 'sales' is even *remotely* a valid measurement of the success of an OS. The purpose of software isn't to make money for the company that sells it, the purpose of software is to do what the person installing/deploying it wants it to do.
1. Require job postings to specify the actual location where the employee being sought will be working. (One state site I know is subject to employers geo-spamming their postings, advertising the job in many different regions of the state)
.. Im sure theres more, but thats all I can think of right now..
2. Absolutely prohibit (or at least actively seperate) anything that isnt *actual*, *conventional* employment. (Eg, the ones where you have to pay for 'memberships', or other work-at-home type scams).
3. Prohibit employers from demanding SSN's and other secure private data online - in fact, SSN's should only really need to be provided *after* a job offer (possibly conditional on bg checks that require the SSN or other similar critera) has actually been made.
Not all that odd, really, since there is no TFA. The link goes to the login form for some private site, and there seems to NOT BE A WAY to actually click through to the article.
I see the /. editors have a new whore, I guess they got tired of the NYT and now hang with the W post.
For the cheap seats this time:
IF YOU CAN'T POST AN OPEN, PUBLIC LINK TO THE STORY, THEN DON'T POST IT AT ALL
The link given goes to the login form for some private site - If /. cant provide a open, public link to a story, then dont post it.
/. users could check a pref to supress their appearance completely.
It would be really nice if articles that linked to private sites culd be marked somehow, and
I don't know who you are talking to, but I personally never voted for anything to do with Microsoft. In fact I basically started completely boycotting MS entirely sometime around 1995 - up to then I had been using MS-DOS with DesQview (Windows 3.1 was a horrific POS.) Once I realized the days of dial-up unix shell access to the Internet was dying and IP over dialip (aka PPP) was coming (for which DOS support was either missing or abysmal), I moved entirely into the Free (yes, thats a capital F, see gnu.org) unix world, and have looked back only with laughter and pity for those that stuck (or were stuck) with MS.
Perhaps the laser is magnetically aimed?
I'm wondering why you havent told them long ago to get email from somewhere other than AOL (even if for some reason they wont switch their Internet).
"Friends don't let Friends use AOL"
There is no need to compile such a list - by default *all* email addresses are on it, and to not be a spammer you only send to those addresses that have specifically opted *IN* to receiving your email (and only then when you have confirmed that the owner of the address is the one doing the opting, to avoid third-parties from signing you up)
Yahoo isnt getting in the spam industry - Yahoo has been a spam supporter for years.
1. If the recipient was expecting the email from HfH (or whoever), and wanted it, they will notice they are no longer getting it, and will call AOL and complain. Less savvy ones may be brushed off, but some may get indignant and demand that AOL stop filtering mail that they want to receive, regardless of wether the sender paid or not.
2. If the recipient was NOT expecting the email and will miss it if it does not arrive, then they may well consider that it *was* spam, regardless of wether the sender is 'legit'.
3. If a customer receives spam from one of these pay-to-spam companies, and continues to receive it, even after informing AOL that it is spam, then hopefully they will complain as well, or maybe filter it individually (if AOL offers that)
Wether a message is spam or not has *NOTHING* to do with wether the company sending it is trying to scam the recipient or not, and nothing to do with wether they are trying to sell crap or wether they are selling great products, or wether they really are a charitable company or not, and especially not wether or not they *paid* your email provider for the right to email you. Only the individual receiving a message can determine if it is spam or not.
If AOL is accepting money from spammers, perhaps they can offer discounted rates to customers of theirs that agree to receive the spam.
They do. Just log in to your google account and click 'Search History' (at the top), then 'Remove items' (on the left) - As well as the ability to remove individual searches or clicked results, there is also a "Clear entire Search History" option.
And your point is?
I would think it would be obvious that anyone who was a 'hobbyist' programmer was employed doing something other than programming, or had some other source of income. Thats what makes them a 'hobbyist' - if they wrote software for a living, then they wouldn't be a hobbyist anymore, now would they?
No, neither RMS nor any other sane FS advocate demands that *you* give away *your* program, or that others be allowed to do so. However, we would demand that no one bne forced to use *your* program, that others be allowed to write their own program which may very well do the same thing, and that if you *choose* to use code from *his* (RMS) program in *your* program, then you must allow anyone that you provide your program to a complete copy of the source code used to built your program.
The GPL is not viral, in that nothing *ever* forces you to allow it into your program. It is only if *you* choose to use *someone elses's* code in your program, that that person has licensed to you under the GPL, that you then become bound by the GPL. You *always* have the choice to *NOT* use other people's GPL code, and license (or not) your code or programs however you want.
The concept is that if you want to benefit from the work of programmers who give away their code for free, you must also be of benefit to those programmers. You can choose to participate, or not. But you have neither the legal nor moral right to demand to profit from their work without your own full participation.
I dont think peterpi was suggesting that "Open Source" was piracy. I am an advocate of Free Software myself, and I also would not recommend pirating proprietary software. I'm also unsure how you got the impression that he was rich or used Windows.
(The point is that rather than stealing (*OR* buying) the closed-source crap, use software that actually encourages you to share it)
If I were an AOL user, I would demand an option to send mail from anyone that had *paid* to send me mail to 'junk' (or outright refuse it) unless I specifically chose to accept it.
Similarly, I would demand the right to have mail that I *wanted* to receive to be accepted and delivered normally, regardless of wether the sender had paid AOL.
Thankfully, the odds of my ever using AOL for email are about the same as George Bush and Jerry Falwell flying to pluto together in a Cessna and getting a date with a pair of alien prostitutes with 6 legs and 2 heads.
Gee, I wouldnt want anything bad to happen to your PC. You know, you really shouldnt be running Windows on that, or anything from Microsoft - you're just asked for one of around a million or so various trojan horses or other exploits that turn your PC into a spam or porn relay, steal your private data, or at best just severely cripple its performance.
*First* support the standards/specifications (eg, W3C) without detecting specific software or versions (or if you must detect, then follow the spec if you dont recognize what you detect, or the detection fails). That will automatically support anything that exists or that comes to exist in the future that is standards compliant.
Then, if you *must*, support any specific non-standards-compliant browsers which for some reason are still in popular use, in a 'bare minimum' sort of way - eg, so that someone using one can at least see and navigate the basic information on the site.
Think of it this way - tv broadcasters don't have to 'support' specific brands or models of tv sets - they transmit a signal in the standard, documented manner, and any tv set that can receive the standard signal works just fine. TV sets that are unable or unwilling to receive the standard signal, dont get much market share.
*Lots* of good info at anybrowser.org
What I want is some wireless broadband tech that is capable of working without LOS, over appreciable distances. The telco monopolies are never going to give up their stranglehold on their copper, and even if they someday drag fiber around everywhere you know they are gojng to charge through the nose for it, and still keep it under tight monopoly control. Its time to bypass them,
For the record, no company that should be legitimately consider an ISP would do this - only the telecom giants (phone as well as cable) that know they have a stranglehold on wired broadband do this sort of thing.
Unless regulators finally get a clue, the only hope we have is some major disruptive advancement in wireless technology. One that didnt require LOS, expensive equipment, worked over long distances, etc..