What's your point? The grocery store wants to sell me a red pepper for $2 that I could grow for a few cents. That doesn't make them crooks, it's just the nature of capitalism and value add. Raising your own produce is only cheap if you know how to do it, have the space to do it, and are willing to put in the time to do so. And if your time is free. The free market also provides other options - I can get them cheaper at the farmers' market, but only during certain portions of the year and only if I'm willing to shop at specific times. It's all about tradeoffs and what people are willing to pay for.
The crooks are the people who charge $10,000 for something you can build in your garage for $50.
Most people can't build anything of the kind for any amount of money. How many people do you think know how to solder? The reason why this guy was able to build this for $240 is because he has a $150,000+ education, is far above average, and has access to the tools needed to make this.
Are you proposing that you get paid minimum wage once you graduate because students are willing to work for free or cheap on projects? Or do you expect to get paid enough to live above a student quality lifestyle, pay back student loans, support a family, etc.? Are you advocating for communism?
Does your $50 test equipment have a warranty? Support? Certification? Documentation? Insurance covering damages if it should short out and burn down the lab? Can a replacement be overnighted from the factory if need be? Are you factoring in the fact that your university is subsidized by research grants, donors, and possibly the government (if it's a public school) which distorts true costs? Are your scavenged parts going to be reliable? Are you providing health insurance for the people building the gear? Unemployment insurance? FICA? Paying rent on the facility? Allowing for a middle salesman who'll be vital to getting your product into customers' hands?
The basic fact of capitalism is that you price your product and/or service as high as you think the market will pay. Unless there's a monopoly, either you've priced yourself appropriately or someone will undercut you and you'll have to lower your prices or go out of business. There's nothing wrong with aiming for the high end of a market. If you can double your prices and still get half of your business, you're doing less work for the same money. Of course, your customers might not be very loyal as a result.
If you think that the test equipment is overpriced, once you graduate, find some investors and start your own company with better pricing. But I'd recommend taking a few business classes first. Even if you got your parts, tools, shipping, and rent for free (and paid no taxes), you'd still have to make and sell 4 or 5 pieces of test equipment at $50/each every week just to pay yourself minimum wage.
You can see my longer reply to Darkness 404 above. But in short:
Whether or not it has been upheld by the Supreme Court, it is still bogus
The constitution says that the Supreme Court is the final arbitrator of law. If you say that their decisions are bogus, you say that the entirety of the constitution is bogus, which makes your point worthless.
We have to define what actually consitutues "unreasonable" or a "search" or a "seizure" and that's where we get into trouble.
Well, yes. As an amateur linguist with training and experience in the field, I can assure you that words without definition are meaningless. As I alluded to, to make a bad argument is to give your enemies comfort, so don't do that, eh? Do you really think that anything you posted would convert anyone who didn't already agree with you to your cause?
Yes, but that still doesn't make it right or truly legitimate.
That makes it legitimate. That's the very essence of Article III section 1. To try to deny that the Supreme Court has the ability to declare something you don't like constitutionally valid is to deny all of the constitution, which makes your original point moot. Even with the so-called activist judges, generally the court is loath to go against established precedent, which is part of why we have constitutional amendments forbidding slavery rather than a Supreme Court ruling.
As for the rightness, as it happens, I generally agree with you, but to make the wrong argument damages your cause. Rather than making the complaint that the searches are unconstitutional (which will make most people to dismiss you), explain why current laws are bad and should be fixed. (This, incidentally, is part of why TFA is a good thing.)
I think we can all agree that the intent of it wasn't to search everything but rather give border officers the authority to search for things like weapons not search computer files.
Article I section 8 states defending the country is part of Congress' duties. Knowing who and what is coming into the country is part of that. The question is what is reasonable and appropriate to do. They're certainly not checking everything - I sailed right through customs last year (the only time I've been out of the country since 9/11) with multiple data carrying devices, as did everyone else (nearly a dozen people) I know who arrived with me.
This must be repealed either at the legislative or by the courts as unconstitutional.
Legislature cannot declare something to be constitutional or unconstitutional, that's part of the separation of powers. But they can fix bad but constitutional laws, which is what should happen.
And for those delusional masses who think that this prevents "terrorism", ask yourself, what computer file can be gotten in a foreign country that is illegal that can't be gotten via the internet?
As it happens, I have some infosec credentials (look them up if you care). A surprising number of people are caught with really dumb slip-ups. The lock on your front door is next to worthless if someone who knows what they're doing wants in, but do you lock it up anyway?
Please tell me how warrantless searches of computers are legitimate to begin with.
It's called the Border Search Exception and it has a long history of being upheld by the Supreme Court. It has its roots in the acts of the First Congress in 1789. If you leave the country, you're subject to being searched upon return.
Maybe because resumes get sent to HR and management, not experienced programmers?
Do you put the fact you took Honors English in 11th grade on your resume? A-Levels - "This is normally done as a direct continuation of the secondary education process and hence most students study for the qualification from age 16 to 18."
Did you read TFA? "The Computing A Level is not intended as a programming course but a course that covers the fundamentals of computing of which programming (and problem solving) form a key component." This isn't gutting a college level course, this is changing classes you might take to see if you'd like to be a CS major in a year or two. C is not a good language to be teaching most 16-18 year olds those fundamentals both from their development standpoint and the difficulty finding good teachers proficient in it. Personally, I'd say Python is the best from their list, because it combines conciseness and ease of use with real world practicality.
What on earth gives you that idea? Please show me any language in the GPL that specifies compilation that supports your claim.
By that logic, nothing written in a non-compiled language could ever be GPLed. Code that requires GPLed libraries to compile are derived works, that's the entire reason why the LGPL was created was to have an exception to that.
For example when you modify GPL code (a single character in a source file is enough) and even if you just use that in-house you are required to publish the modification or the license grant by the copyright holder is null and void.
"The GPL does not require you to release your modified version, or any part of it. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization."
Is the project really worth the trouble? Both you and the department failed to take the proper steps when you were hired. If you push the issue, they may fire you. You'd likely be blackballed from ever working for the university again. If the matter goes to court, you might scare off future employers down the line. Companies get very scared at the idea of someone introducing GPL poisoned (their frame of mind, not mine) code into their products without disclosing it.
Unless this is some amazingly cool and important project, it might be worth just taking it as a lesson learned. Don't ever use code that requires a license in your employers' software without documentation (and for something like this, keep an extra copy at home), especially if it's something you wrote. Cover Your Ass (CYA).
Down the line after you leave the university's employment you might go back to your code prior to be hired and release that but it still might be pushing it. You might be legally right but that doesn't mean that you can afford a Pyrrhic victory.
Did you begin the project as a student (prior to being paid), particularly in any way related to a class? If so, some universities attempt to apply IP ownership to students' work.
From my understanding of the GPL, you were fine creating software that relied on GPLed libraries and not GPLing it, provided you didn't release it. The place where it kicks in is when you distribute (say, to the university). At that point, you were obligated to put your code under the GPL. Did you do so and if so, was it formal?
Assuming that there's no student clause, you own the copyright on everything you wrote prior to them hiring you. They most likely own everything after that. For you to have legally distributed the initial code to them, it would have to have been GPLed. If it wasn't formally GPLed, they could try to put you on the hook for using unlicensed software in what you wrote for them.
They could GPL their portion of it and everything would be solved. Or they could eliminate all of the original code and still use the GPL library and be legal so long as they don't distribute it.
The problem is that those proposing these laws never try and prove that existing laws are insufficient detterent.
The Federal Hate Crime law was passed in 1969 after numerous racial attacks during the civil rights movement, including the Birmingham Church bombing and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. In case you think that if hate crimes were such a problem, the law would have been passed far earlier, I'll point out that the Civil Rights Act was only passed in 1964.
For example, the argument was made in 2000 that hate crime legislation was needed in Texas because of the guys who drug a black man behind a pickup. Two of the three involved were sentenced to death. There was no evidence that the third was involved because of racism. Texas has no "hate crime" laws, yet this case was used to promote the idea of passing one.
I'm not sure what your point is. A shocking hate crime was used to pass a hate crime law in a state that had previously not had one. The fact that one of the three people involved didn't exhibit racial motivation doesn't change the fact that it highlighted the absence of a hate crime law.
Exactly what greater penalty would a "hate crime" law have imposed on the men sentenced to death
It's the same reason that we convict people already serving life sentences or sentenced to death - it shows that society rejects the actions of that criminal and holds them to account. Would you suggest that if someone serving life without parole in a state without capital punishment kills a guard, that they should not be charged with that crime?
And not all hate crimes are capital offenses.
(note: there was no evidence that the one who was not sentenced to death had racial motivations in committing the crime).
And nothing about how the case played out suggested that he would have been charged with a hate crime if the statute had existed at the time.
In some sectors it is a special privilege not to be fired simply because you are black or a woman. Especially when everyone else is being fired.
If a law is improperly used or enforced, it does not make it a bad law.
The examples you mentioned have nothing to do with hate crimes only discrimination with the possible example of your last example.
The discussion is about how his views on homosexuality affect his political actions against gay rights. The most recent example was his attempt to get rid of Virginia's colleges policy of non-discrimination against gays.
People should not be discriminated against for any reason that isn't job related.
Can you point to anything in what I posted or the policy I linked to this disagrees with that?
But that is a straw-man argument because the mental states of many murders can be determined while an assault on a black/latino/gay man usually isn't. If you beat your wife to death with a blender it is involuntary murder but if you poisoned her that is first degree murder because the poison required planing (most of time). If I beat up a black man is it because I wanted his wallet or because he was black and just happen to steal his wallet?
The fact that it's a hate crime law does not relieve the requirement for the prosecutor to demonstrate the violation of the law beyond a reasonable doubt or the responsibility of the jury to acquit if that is not done. In your above example, you should not be charged with a hate crime. On the other hand, if before you do so, you send an e-mail to the local KKK listserv saying that you're going to go put a black man in his place, then you should. See the difference?
If hate crimes are needed then they shouldn't be discriminatory either.
True. But again, hate crime charges should only be brought when there's clear intent to perpetrate a crime against one or more people specifically because of a factor unrelated to the crime.
Of course, if what you want is not to simply put gay people on an even playing field legally, but you really want to give them special privileges instead, no argument is going to work with these people.
Here is an example of one of the policies in question.
Is not being fired simply for being black a "special privilege?" Is not being denied entrance as a student simply for being black a "special privilege?" Is not being denied financial aid simply for being black a "special privilege?" Is not being denied the ability to participate in graduation simply for being black a "special privilege?" Is not being called a [racial slur of choice] in the workplace or the classroom a "special privilege?"
Now s/black/gay and s/racial/sexual/. Do any of the above statements make _more_ sense after that? People should be hired/accepted/funded/allowed participation from the best possible candidate regardless of race, military background, age, disability, religion, gender, nationality, and so forth. Because there have been problems with issues in the past, they have been enumerated as things you should not discriminate against. It's not providing [positive] special treatment, it's ensuring against [negative] special treatment.
If violent crimes are not being dealt with properly, that is an issue to be dealt with across the board, but we should never have a law that imposes a heavier penalty for assaulting a member of a 'protected class' differently than an assault on any other citizen
If basic laws provide sufficient deterrence to common crime but a specific class of people are still being targeted, then some kind of additional measure is needed. Let's say that there's an acceptable level of muggings - there's a few, but in general, the threat of imprisonment is enough to deter most would-be muggers, and the punishment/rehabilitation level is maximizes deterrence, minimizes state costs, and minimizes repeat offenders by effectively rehabilitating them. At the same time, anti-Catholic sentiment has caused a rampant level of muggings of nuns that is not deterred by the basic statues.
To alter the already correct formula that deters casual muggings to attempt to protect the nuns would be a societal harm.
Further, hate crime prosecutions are often done to change the venue when local forces are sympathetic to the cause and chose not to use the existing laws. For example, U.S. v. Cecil Price et al.
we also should insofar as at all possible avoid defining crimes by ultimately unknowable mental states of the aggressors, rather than simply by their actions.
By that logic there should be no distinction between involuntary manslaughter and first degree murder.
AAC may be technically superior. But most people are discerning enough to care about improved sound quality. Witness how many people use the rather bad default iPod earbuds or the various studies showing most people can't tell the difference between a compressed and uncompressed file. Ogg Vorbis is also supposed to be technically superior but has no significant use because very few devices and content providers support it.
However, MP3 files will play on my car stereo (and most car stereos made in the past few years), my living room stereo, the all in one system in my kitchen, and my Sansa, Creative Labs, and Archos portable music players. (Not to mention virtually every DVD player and an increasing number of TVs made in the past five years.) AAC, DRMed or not, play on nothing I own (other than computers). MP3 formated files are important to people outside of the iPod ecosystem because they just work.
Just an an FYI, the people in white vans selling speakers that they insinuate they obtained dubiously are a con rather than an outright illegal operation. (It may also be illegal in some areas, but often the claims fall within the limits of what's legal.)
testp.cpp (subtract 3 from mainType since that seemed like a pattern)
11-3!=9
but I have to wonder if this was the work of a moron or someone who knew exactly what they were doing and did so for a reason.
If there were some amazingly useful reason to do it this way, it should have been clearly documented and never made it to The Daily WTF. If you were running the function more than once (especially if you randomized the value of mainType and ran other code in between calls to the function), you'd eventually see a performance difference between the various versions of your code. However, unless you were in *massive* need for performance or space, breaking standard programming conventions in a way that will confuse other programmers (or even yourself a year later) is a very bad idea.
"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil" -Knuth
Clearly written, understandable code that programmers spend less time trying to understand and are less likely to introduce bugs into will almost always trump a small, unneeded optimization.
Even when your enter key is broken, you still can add helpful newline characters by pressing alt-013 (using your number pad). Or in many web forums, just typing
at the end of a paragraph. Cheers!
Okay, my statements came across as a bit unyielding.
Yes, in fact several of your statements in your reply contradict your initial statements. It was the irrational "no personal use, ever!!" sentiment (and the fact that it inevitably got modded +5 despite being nonsense) that I was replying to as much as anything else. But rather than bickering about that, I'll stick to your reply. I'll also assume from your lack of reply that we're in agreement that the law doesn't deal with modern communications properly and that it should be fixed, even if we disagree on the fix.
Many people, including the guy in TFA, don't want this. They want to use an employer's resources for free while also having their privacy protected and it just doesn't work that way.... [various cases] But none of these are things that should be legally protected.
In the specific case in question, the person was told that he could use the device for personal matters if he paid any overage. If an employer voluntarily enters into an agreement to provide a benefit, be it personal use of communications devices or personalized tutus, why shouldn't it be protected?
the fact that they were using the phrase "grey area" astounded me.
The reason it's a grey area is that technology has advanced far faster than the laws that regulate it.
Look, it's simple: if your employer owns a device, and allows you to use it, you are not to ever use it for personal reasons, nor should you ever expect even the slightest amount of privacy for communications using the device. Even (and probably especially) if they give you permission for personal use. That goes for cell phones, pagers, computers, slide rules, everything. That means you do not log into personal Facebook, Google, or Hotmail at work. You do not use the company phone to call home. If you do any of these, you've 1) probably violated the terms of your employment and 2) have given the company/government permission to peer into all personal communications made with your employer's equipment.
Do you have any legal reason for these claims or are you just pontificating? In the case of the former, you're absolutely wrong (my terms of employment specify reasonable personal use of the telephone and computers for everyone from the janitor to the president). If you're just spouting off, the good news for the rest of us is that most people don't like to have an obnoxious absolutist relationship with their employer and so laws are unlikely to ever line up with your views. Just guessing, you don't have kids, do you?
You have explicit rights (in most cases) to privacy and use of the property that you actually own. That's it, the line is drawn there.
A person in jail talking with their lawyer via telephone (whether closed circuit in person or to the lawyer's office) doesn't own the communications device or have property rights to the room they're in yet their conversion is and must be considered protected. As would a private conversation between a husband and wife, even if they happen to have borrowed my car and are driving while conversing.
It gives you all the Doe's at a specific month who visited some URL.
If the government suspects that a URL is being used to do illicit communications, how else do you expect them to figure out who was trying to get the message? Particularly if they're clever enough that rather than having an URL of someserver.com/alqaida/people_we_will_kill.html, they've used steganography to embed the information in an otherwise harmless looking file?
The question is not whether such search warrants have been granted, it's whether it has been done so in an abusive manner. And that's not covered in this document.
Worldwide Nokia had 40% of the smartphone market in Q4 2008 but that was with a 10% drop from the previous quarter.
But see how I specified the hardware/software package? Symbian is dying and Maemo has yet to catch on (witness the sales of the iPod touch compared to the Nokia handheld tablets). How many people do you know who will say that developing for Symbian and Nokia phones is easy and a joy to do? Look at the user interface experience. Just about everyone who has an iPhone loves the interface. The UI in most other phones is something that the user grudgingly puts up with, not whips out to show off to their friends.
(And if you have that low opinion of your potential customers - that if they modify their own product to get basic functionality to work, that Just Works on all other phones, then they must be pirates - then I have no sympathy if Apple rejects the "app" that you've spent months or years developing.)
As much as I love a good rant, I feel compelled to point out that I neither own an iPhone nor develop apps for them.
If you want the basic functionality that "just works" with everything else, buy that everything else. Apple and AT&T don't allow tethering. So buy a phone that does. No one is forcing anyone to get an iPhone. Don't like the features? Don't buy it.
As I linked to above (reproduced here), there is a lot of piracy on iPhones and so far as I know, the only way to pirate on an iPhone is to jailbreak it. There is a chunk of jailbreaking users who are pure of heart and are merely trying to violate the terms of service with Apple and/or AT&T, but they're part of a demographic that is not all pure and shiny and a side effect of that is that they're not going to be highly sought after as customers.
I would hate it to be forced to go to Microsoft website to get any Windows applications, and not have a choice but to go there.
Then don't buy a Microsoft product (in that scenario). Don't buy an iPhone. No one is holding a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to buy an iPhone. Vote with your (you being society in general, not you specifically) rather than giving companies a perverse incentive to keep doing what they're doing. If every person who WANTWANTWANTS an iPhone instead purchased an open platform, providing development dollars to the companies who treat the consumers with respect, we'd all be better off.
Not everyone, no. But draw me a Venn diagram. Make the center circle "People who know how to pirate iPhone apps" and the other two circles "People who have jailbroken iPhones" and "People who don't have jailbroken iPhones." What does it look like?
Not that the linked site appears to have much if anything to do with breaking the monopoly. The vast majority of iPhone apps are very inexpensive, so the only hope of making anything above hobby money as a developer is to be part of the Apple marketplace that offers tens of millions of potential customers. Not to mention the suspicion that people who jailbreak phones are likely to know how to pirate software as well, making them a less desirable market as well.
The site provides another forum to attempt to get Apple to reform its ways and to try to help each other figure out the sometimes murky meaning of the rejections. There's no revolution there. Until someone provides a real threat to Apple's hardware/software iPhone platform, it has no real motivation to mend its relationship with developers.
That said, karmic payoff may just bite them once there's that alternative.
I've never heard of ANYONE complaining about the Pre due to its network.
I strongly considered the Pre (or another smartphone on the Sprint network) recently but decided against it because I live in a small college town with limited Sprint coverage. Specifically, I know people who are on Sprint who can't get signal inside buildings on campus or in my home. Whereas my local CDMA provider covers both of them quite well and has excellent roaming agreements for when I'm not in the region.
But, you can't hate the phone because of the network.
You can hate the manufacturer for making exclusivity deals with networks that don't meet your needs. The iPhone and HTC Android phones are out of my consideration because GSM coverage is still insufficient for my needs.
This is a work-around for the bug that copyright law does not define a public-performance right for software, although a similar right is defined for audio recordings, movies, and theatrical scripts.
Do you really think that adding a bizarre twist to what's already a complicated and confusing legal system is patching a bug?
From your suggestion, anyone running a Linux webserver would have to make the source available per the GPL? Computer labs and internet cafes using any GPL software as well? What if I let a stranger on the bus use my laptop to check e-mail?
Thus, we had a loop-hole in that companies which performed the software over the net without ever distributing it can make substantive derivative works of the program from which they derive tremendous profit but have none of the obligations. Think of google in this context.
It's fairly clear and easy to define what public performance of artistic works are.
What exactly do you think is a public performance of software? Would you argue that using gcc is a public performance and thus everything compiled with it is now GPLed? Would reading data created on a clustered Linux supercomputer be a public performance? Is only interactive use of software like using modified web forum software public performance? You cite Google, but users don't get anything but the results of non-GPLed software that's running on top of an OS that is GPLed. Why is this any different from a publishing company that uses a modified version of Open Office internally to publish books in dead tree format?
If anything akin to what you're suggesting was created, the "GPL is a virus" folks would have an absolute field day - and justifiably so.
Your "tremendous profit" statement is bordering on a strawman - there's nothing in the GPL against making a profit - and reflects a position on the GPL that I'm not sure is part of its intent. From the FSF GPL FAQ:
The GPL does not require you to release your modified version, or any part of it. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.
It doesn't say if you let someone outside your organization use the modified version, only if you distribute it externally.
Slashdot Mirror
What's your point? The grocery store wants to sell me a red pepper for $2 that I could grow for a few cents. That doesn't make them crooks, it's just the nature of capitalism and value add. Raising your own produce is only cheap if you know how to do it, have the space to do it, and are willing to put in the time to do so. And if your time is free. The free market also provides other options - I can get them cheaper at the farmers' market, but only during certain portions of the year and only if I'm willing to shop at specific times. It's all about tradeoffs and what people are willing to pay for.
The crooks are the people who charge $10,000 for something you can build in your garage for $50.
Most people can't build anything of the kind for any amount of money. How many people do you think know how to solder? The reason why this guy was able to build this for $240 is because he has a $150,000+ education, is far above average, and has access to the tools needed to make this.
Are you proposing that you get paid minimum wage once you graduate because students are willing to work for free or cheap on projects? Or do you expect to get paid enough to live above a student quality lifestyle, pay back student loans, support a family, etc.? Are you advocating for communism?
Does your $50 test equipment have a warranty? Support? Certification? Documentation? Insurance covering damages if it should short out and burn down the lab? Can a replacement be overnighted from the factory if need be? Are you factoring in the fact that your university is subsidized by research grants, donors, and possibly the government (if it's a public school) which distorts true costs? Are your scavenged parts going to be reliable? Are you providing health insurance for the people building the gear? Unemployment insurance? FICA? Paying rent on the facility? Allowing for a middle salesman who'll be vital to getting your product into customers' hands?
The basic fact of capitalism is that you price your product and/or service as high as you think the market will pay. Unless there's a monopoly, either you've priced yourself appropriately or someone will undercut you and you'll have to lower your prices or go out of business. There's nothing wrong with aiming for the high end of a market. If you can double your prices and still get half of your business, you're doing less work for the same money. Of course, your customers might not be very loyal as a result.
If you think that the test equipment is overpriced, once you graduate, find some investors and start your own company with better pricing. But I'd recommend taking a few business classes first. Even if you got your parts, tools, shipping, and rent for free (and paid no taxes), you'd still have to make and sell 4 or 5 pieces of test equipment at $50/each every week just to pay yourself minimum wage.
You can see my longer reply to Darkness 404 above. But in short:
Whether or not it has been upheld by the Supreme Court, it is still bogus
The constitution says that the Supreme Court is the final arbitrator of law. If you say that their decisions are bogus, you say that the entirety of the constitution is bogus, which makes your point worthless.
We have to define what actually consitutues "unreasonable" or a "search" or a "seizure" and that's where we get into trouble.
Well, yes. As an amateur linguist with training and experience in the field, I can assure you that words without definition are meaningless. As I alluded to, to make a bad argument is to give your enemies comfort, so don't do that, eh? Do you really think that anything you posted would convert anyone who didn't already agree with you to your cause?
Yes, but that still doesn't make it right or truly legitimate.
That makes it legitimate. That's the very essence of Article III section 1. To try to deny that the Supreme Court has the ability to declare something you don't like constitutionally valid is to deny all of the constitution, which makes your original point moot. Even with the so-called activist judges, generally the court is loath to go against established precedent, which is part of why we have constitutional amendments forbidding slavery rather than a Supreme Court ruling.
As for the rightness, as it happens, I generally agree with you, but to make the wrong argument damages your cause. Rather than making the complaint that the searches are unconstitutional (which will make most people to dismiss you), explain why current laws are bad and should be fixed. (This, incidentally, is part of why TFA is a good thing.)
I think we can all agree that the intent of it wasn't to search everything but rather give border officers the authority to search for things like weapons not search computer files.
Article I section 8 states defending the country is part of Congress' duties. Knowing who and what is coming into the country is part of that. The question is what is reasonable and appropriate to do. They're certainly not checking everything - I sailed right through customs last year (the only time I've been out of the country since 9/11) with multiple data carrying devices, as did everyone else (nearly a dozen people) I know who arrived with me.
This must be repealed either at the legislative or by the courts as unconstitutional.
Legislature cannot declare something to be constitutional or unconstitutional, that's part of the separation of powers. But they can fix bad but constitutional laws, which is what should happen.
And for those delusional masses who think that this prevents "terrorism", ask yourself, what computer file can be gotten in a foreign country that is illegal that can't be gotten via the internet?
As it happens, I have some infosec credentials (look them up if you care). A surprising number of people are caught with really dumb slip-ups. The lock on your front door is next to worthless if someone who knows what they're doing wants in, but do you lock it up anyway?
Please tell me how warrantless searches of computers are legitimate to begin with.
It's called the Border Search Exception and it has a long history of being upheld by the Supreme Court. It has its roots in the acts of the First Congress in 1789. If you leave the country, you're subject to being searched upon return.
Maybe because resumes get sent to HR and management, not experienced programmers?
Do you put the fact you took Honors English in 11th grade on your resume? A-Levels - "This is normally done as a direct continuation of the secondary education process and hence most students study for the qualification from age 16 to 18."
Did you read TFA? "The Computing A Level is not intended as a programming course but a course that covers the fundamentals of computing of which programming (and problem solving) form a key component." This isn't gutting a college level course, this is changing classes you might take to see if you'd like to be a CS major in a year or two. C is not a good language to be teaching most 16-18 year olds those fundamentals both from their development standpoint and the difficulty finding good teachers proficient in it. Personally, I'd say Python is the best from their list, because it combines conciseness and ease of use with real world practicality.
What on earth gives you that idea? Please show me any language in the GPL that specifies compilation that supports your claim.
By that logic, nothing written in a non-compiled language could ever be GPLed. Code that requires GPLed libraries to compile are derived works, that's the entire reason why the LGPL was created was to have an exception to that.
For example when you modify GPL code (a single character in a source file is enough) and even if you just use that in-house
you are required to publish the modification or the license grant by the copyright holder is null and void.
You're wrong.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic
"The GPL does not require you to release your modified version, or any part of it. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization."
IANAL. If you care about this, get one.
Is the project really worth the trouble? Both you and the department failed to take the proper steps when you were hired. If you push the issue, they may fire you. You'd likely be blackballed from ever working for the university again. If the matter goes to court, you might scare off future employers down the line. Companies get very scared at the idea of someone introducing GPL poisoned (their frame of mind, not mine) code into their products without disclosing it.
Unless this is some amazingly cool and important project, it might be worth just taking it as a lesson learned. Don't ever use code that requires a license in your employers' software without documentation (and for something like this, keep an extra copy at home), especially if it's something you wrote. Cover Your Ass (CYA).
Down the line after you leave the university's employment you might go back to your code prior to be hired and release that but it still might be pushing it. You might be legally right but that doesn't mean that you can afford a Pyrrhic victory.
Did you begin the project as a student (prior to being paid), particularly in any way related to a class? If so, some universities attempt to apply IP ownership to students' work.
From my understanding of the GPL, you were fine creating software that relied on GPLed libraries and not GPLing it, provided you didn't release it. The place where it kicks in is when you distribute (say, to the university). At that point, you were obligated to put your code under the GPL. Did you do so and if so, was it formal?
Assuming that there's no student clause, you own the copyright on everything you wrote prior to them hiring you. They most likely own everything after that. For you to have legally distributed the initial code to them, it would have to have been GPLed. If it wasn't formally GPLed, they could try to put you on the hook for using unlicensed software in what you wrote for them.
They could GPL their portion of it and everything would be solved. Or they could eliminate all of the original code and still use the GPL library and be legal so long as they don't distribute it.
The problem is that those proposing these laws never try and prove that existing laws are insufficient detterent.
The Federal Hate Crime law was passed in 1969 after numerous racial attacks during the civil rights movement, including the Birmingham Church bombing and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. In case you think that if hate crimes were such a problem, the law would have been passed far earlier, I'll point out that the Civil Rights Act was only passed in 1964.
For example, the argument was made in 2000 that hate crime legislation was needed in Texas because of the guys who drug a black man behind a pickup. Two of the three involved were sentenced to death. There was no evidence that the third was involved because of racism. Texas has no "hate crime" laws, yet this case was used to promote the idea of passing one.
I'm not sure what your point is. A shocking hate crime was used to pass a hate crime law in a state that had previously not had one. The fact that one of the three people involved didn't exhibit racial motivation doesn't change the fact that it highlighted the absence of a hate crime law.
Exactly what greater penalty would a "hate crime" law have imposed on the men sentenced to death
It's the same reason that we convict people already serving life sentences or sentenced to death - it shows that society rejects the actions of that criminal and holds them to account. Would you suggest that if someone serving life without parole in a state without capital punishment kills a guard, that they should not be charged with that crime?
And not all hate crimes are capital offenses.
(note: there was no evidence that the one who was not sentenced to death had racial motivations in committing the crime).
And nothing about how the case played out suggested that he would have been charged with a hate crime if the statute had existed at the time.
In some sectors it is a special privilege not to be fired simply because you are black or a woman. Especially when everyone else is being fired.
If a law is improperly used or enforced, it does not make it a bad law.
The examples you mentioned have nothing to do with hate crimes only discrimination with the possible example of your last example.
The discussion is about how his views on homosexuality affect his political actions against gay rights. The most recent example was his attempt to get rid of Virginia's colleges policy of non-discrimination against gays.
People should not be discriminated against for any reason that isn't job related.
Can you point to anything in what I posted or the policy I linked to this disagrees with that?
But that is a straw-man argument because the mental states of many murders can be determined while an assault on a black/latino/gay man usually isn't. If you beat your wife to death with a blender it is involuntary murder but if you poisoned her that is first degree murder because the poison required planing (most of time). If I beat up a black man is it because I wanted his wallet or because he was black and just happen to steal his wallet?
The fact that it's a hate crime law does not relieve the requirement for the prosecutor to demonstrate the violation of the law beyond a reasonable doubt or the responsibility of the jury to acquit if that is not done. In your above example, you should not be charged with a hate crime. On the other hand, if before you do so, you send an e-mail to the local KKK listserv saying that you're going to go put a black man in his place, then you should. See the difference?
If hate crimes are needed then they shouldn't be discriminatory either.
True. But again, hate crime charges should only be brought when there's clear intent to perpetrate a crime against one or more people specifically because of a factor unrelated to the crime.
Of course, if what you want is not to simply put gay people on an even playing field legally, but you really want to give them special privileges instead, no argument is going to work with these people.
Here is an example of one of the policies in question.
Is not being fired simply for being black a "special privilege?"
Is not being denied entrance as a student simply for being black a "special privilege?"
Is not being denied financial aid simply for being black a "special privilege?"
Is not being denied the ability to participate in graduation simply for being black a "special privilege?"
Is not being called a [racial slur of choice] in the workplace or the classroom a "special privilege?"
Now s/black/gay and s/racial/sexual/. Do any of the above statements make _more_ sense after that? People should be hired/accepted/funded/allowed participation from the best possible candidate regardless of race, military background, age, disability, religion, gender, nationality, and so forth. Because there have been problems with issues in the past, they have been enumerated as things you should not discriminate against. It's not providing [positive] special treatment, it's ensuring against [negative] special treatment.
If violent crimes are not being dealt with properly, that is an issue to be dealt with across the board, but we should never have a law that imposes a heavier penalty for assaulting a member of a 'protected class' differently than an assault on any other citizen
If basic laws provide sufficient deterrence to common crime but a specific class of people are still being targeted, then some kind of additional measure is needed. Let's say that there's an acceptable level of muggings - there's a few, but in general, the threat of imprisonment is enough to deter most would-be muggers, and the punishment/rehabilitation level is maximizes deterrence, minimizes state costs, and minimizes repeat offenders by effectively rehabilitating them. At the same time, anti-Catholic sentiment has caused a rampant level of muggings of nuns that is not deterred by the basic statues.
To alter the already correct formula that deters casual muggings to attempt to protect the nuns would be a societal harm.
Further, hate crime prosecutions are often done to change the venue when local forces are sympathetic to the cause and chose not to use the existing laws. For example, U.S. v. Cecil Price et al.
we also should insofar as at all possible avoid defining crimes by ultimately unknowable mental states of the aggressors, rather than simply by their actions.
By that logic there should be no distinction between involuntary manslaughter and first degree murder.
AAC may be technically superior. But most people are discerning enough to care about improved sound quality. Witness how many people use the rather bad default iPod earbuds or the various studies showing most people can't tell the difference between a compressed and uncompressed file. Ogg Vorbis is also supposed to be technically superior but has no significant use because very few devices and content providers support it.
However, MP3 files will play on my car stereo (and most car stereos made in the past few years), my living room stereo, the all in one system in my kitchen, and my Sansa, Creative Labs, and Archos portable music players. (Not to mention virtually every DVD player and an increasing number of TVs made in the past five years.) AAC, DRMed or not, play on nothing I own (other than computers). MP3 formated files are important to people outside of the iPod ecosystem because they just work.
Just an an FYI, the people in white vans selling speakers that they insinuate they obtained dubiously are a con rather than an outright illegal operation. (It may also be illegal in some areas, but often the claims fall within the limits of what's legal.)
testp.cpp (subtract 3 from mainType since that seemed like a pattern)
11-3!=9
but I have to wonder if this was the work of a moron or someone who knew exactly what they were doing and did so for a reason.
If there were some amazingly useful reason to do it this way, it should have been clearly documented and never made it to The Daily WTF. If you were running the function more than once (especially if you randomized the value of mainType and ran other code in between calls to the function), you'd eventually see a performance difference between the various versions of your code. However, unless you were in *massive* need for performance or space, breaking standard programming conventions in a way that will confuse other programmers (or even yourself a year later) is a very bad idea.
Clearly written, understandable code that programmers spend less time trying to understand and are less likely to introduce bugs into will almost always trump a small, unneeded optimization.
Helpful hint:
Even when your enter key is broken, you still can add helpful newline characters by pressing alt-013 (using your number pad). Or in many web forums, just typing
at the end of a paragraph. Cheers!
If you want to fix things, you need to better understand how the rules apply to yourself, to them, etc.
It's also neat to read posts in their entirety, like where they say they're referring to Mexican politics.
Okay, my statements came across as a bit unyielding.
Yes, in fact several of your statements in your reply contradict your initial statements. It was the irrational "no personal use, ever!!" sentiment (and the fact that it inevitably got modded +5 despite being nonsense) that I was replying to as much as anything else. But rather than bickering about that, I'll stick to your reply. I'll also assume from your lack of reply that we're in agreement that the law doesn't deal with modern communications properly and that it should be fixed, even if we disagree on the fix.
Many people, including the guy in TFA, don't want this. They want to use an employer's resources for free while also having their privacy protected and it just doesn't work that way. ... [various cases] But none of these are things that should be legally protected.
In the specific case in question, the person was told that he could use the device for personal matters if he paid any overage. If an employer voluntarily enters into an agreement to provide a benefit, be it personal use of communications devices or personalized tutus, why shouldn't it be protected?
the fact that they were using the phrase "grey area" astounded me.
The reason it's a grey area is that technology has advanced far faster than the laws that regulate it.
Look, it's simple: if your employer owns a device, and allows you to use it, you are not to ever use it for personal reasons, nor should you ever expect even the slightest amount of privacy for communications using the device. Even (and probably especially) if they give you permission for personal use. That goes for cell phones, pagers, computers, slide rules, everything. That means you do not log into personal Facebook, Google, or Hotmail at work. You do not use the company phone to call home. If you do any of these, you've 1) probably violated the terms of your employment and 2) have given the company/government permission to peer into all personal communications made with your employer's equipment.
Do you have any legal reason for these claims or are you just pontificating? In the case of the former, you're absolutely wrong (my terms of employment specify reasonable personal use of the telephone and computers for everyone from the janitor to the president). If you're just spouting off, the good news for the rest of us is that most people don't like to have an obnoxious absolutist relationship with their employer and so laws are unlikely to ever line up with your views. Just guessing, you don't have kids, do you?
You have explicit rights (in most cases) to privacy and use of the property that you actually own. That's it, the line is drawn there.
A person in jail talking with their lawyer via telephone (whether closed circuit in person or to the lawyer's office) doesn't own the communications device or have property rights to the room they're in yet their conversion is and must be considered protected. As would a private conversation between a husband and wife, even if they happen to have borrowed my car and are driving while conversing.
It gives you all the Doe's at a specific month who visited some URL.
If the government suspects that a URL is being used to do illicit communications, how else do you expect them to figure out who was trying to get the message? Particularly if they're clever enough that rather than having an URL of someserver.com/alqaida/people_we_will_kill.html, they've used steganography to embed the information in an otherwise harmless looking file?
The question is not whether such search warrants have been granted, it's whether it has been done so in an abusive manner. And that's not covered in this document.
If having a much bigger market share (e.g., Nokia at 40%, to Apple's few per cent) does not count as a "real threat", I am curious to hear what does?
In the US (yes, /. is international but the iPhone is a bit US-centric) smartphone market, Nokia is close to a non-player.
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/10/28/rim-and-apple-top-u-s-smartphone-market-share/
RIM has 40%, Apple has 30%, Palm has 7%.
Worldwide Nokia had 40% of the smartphone market in Q4 2008 but that was with a 10% drop from the previous quarter.
But see how I specified the hardware/software package? Symbian is dying and Maemo has yet to catch on (witness the sales of the iPod touch compared to the Nokia handheld tablets). How many people do you know who will say that developing for Symbian and Nokia phones is easy and a joy to do? Look at the user interface experience. Just about everyone who has an iPhone loves the interface. The UI in most other phones is something that the user grudgingly puts up with, not whips out to show off to their friends.
(And if you have that low opinion of your potential customers - that if they modify their own product to get basic functionality to work, that Just Works on all other phones, then they must be pirates - then I have no sympathy if Apple rejects the "app" that you've spent months or years developing.)
As much as I love a good rant, I feel compelled to point out that I neither own an iPhone nor develop apps for them.
If you want the basic functionality that "just works" with everything else, buy that everything else. Apple and AT&T don't allow tethering. So buy a phone that does. No one is forcing anyone to get an iPhone. Don't like the features? Don't buy it.
As I linked to above (reproduced here), there is a lot of piracy on iPhones and so far as I know, the only way to pirate on an iPhone is to jailbreak it. There is a chunk of jailbreaking users who are pure of heart and are merely trying to violate the terms of service with Apple and/or AT&T, but they're part of a demographic that is not all pure and shiny and a side effect of that is that they're not going to be highly sought after as customers.
I would hate it to be forced to go to Microsoft website to get any Windows applications, and not have a choice but to go there.
Then don't buy a Microsoft product (in that scenario). Don't buy an iPhone. No one is holding a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to buy an iPhone. Vote with your (you being society in general, not you specifically) rather than giving companies a perverse incentive to keep doing what they're doing. If every person who WANTWANTWANTS an iPhone instead purchased an open platform, providing development dollars to the companies who treat the consumers with respect, we'd all be better off.
Not everyone, no. But draw me a Venn diagram. Make the center circle "People who know how to pirate iPhone apps" and the other two circles "People who have jailbroken iPhones" and "People who don't have jailbroken iPhones." What does it look like?
The basic fact is that piracy is rampant in the iPhone world: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4194/iphone_piracy_the_inside_story.php
Does it mean that you are doing it? Of course not. But it means that you're part of a demographic that isn't going to be tremendously sought after.
Not that the linked site appears to have much if anything to do with breaking the monopoly. The vast majority of iPhone apps are very inexpensive, so the only hope of making anything above hobby money as a developer is to be part of the Apple marketplace that offers tens of millions of potential customers. Not to mention the suspicion that people who jailbreak phones are likely to know how to pirate software as well, making them a less desirable market as well.
The site provides another forum to attempt to get Apple to reform its ways and to try to help each other figure out the sometimes murky meaning of the rejections. There's no revolution there. Until someone provides a real threat to Apple's hardware/software iPhone platform, it has no real motivation to mend its relationship with developers.
That said, karmic payoff may just bite them once there's that alternative.
I've never heard of ANYONE complaining about the Pre due to its network.
I strongly considered the Pre (or another smartphone on the Sprint network) recently but decided against it because I live in a small college town with limited Sprint coverage. Specifically, I know people who are on Sprint who can't get signal inside buildings on campus or in my home. Whereas my local CDMA provider covers both of them quite well and has excellent roaming agreements for when I'm not in the region.
But, you can't hate the phone because of the network.
You can hate the manufacturer for making exclusivity deals with networks that don't meet your needs. The iPhone and HTC Android phones are out of my consideration because GSM coverage is still insufficient for my needs.
This is a work-around for the bug that copyright law does not define a public-performance right for software, although a similar right is defined for audio recordings, movies, and theatrical scripts.
Do you really think that adding a bizarre twist to what's already a complicated and confusing legal system is patching a bug?
From your suggestion, anyone running a Linux webserver would have to make the source available per the GPL? Computer labs and internet cafes using any GPL software as well? What if I let a stranger on the bus use my laptop to check e-mail?
Thus, we had a loop-hole in that companies which performed the software over the net without ever distributing it can make substantive derivative works of the program from which they derive tremendous profit but have none of the obligations. Think of google in this context.
It's fairly clear and easy to define what public performance of artistic works are.
What exactly do you think is a public performance of software? Would you argue that using gcc is a public performance and thus everything compiled with it is now GPLed? Would reading data created on a clustered Linux supercomputer be a public performance? Is only interactive use of software like using modified web forum software public performance? You cite Google, but users don't get anything but the results of non-GPLed software that's running on top of an OS that is GPLed. Why is this any different from a publishing company that uses a modified version of Open Office internally to publish books in dead tree format?
If anything akin to what you're suggesting was created, the "GPL is a virus" folks would have an absolute field day - and justifiably so.
Your "tremendous profit" statement is bordering on a strawman - there's nothing in the GPL against making a profit - and reflects a position on the GPL that I'm not sure is part of its intent. From the FSF GPL FAQ:
It doesn't say if you let someone outside your organization use the modified version, only if you distribute it externally.