I trained it with 2 days of e-mail (~700 items - I'm on most of the GCC lists) yesterday and the day before and today I only had to mark 2 out of 160 e-mails as junk.
Once everyone uses this, spam e-mail will disapear because it isn't profitable anymore.
I assume that mozilla is using Bayesian filters, which is what I use, too.
Lately, spammers have been adding randomly selected words to place at the end of the spam in a meaningless "paragraph". The aim is that either these words suffice to get the spam marked non-junk or, more likely, that the presence of these words will increase the likelihood of later false positives.
So far, this tactic hasn't had any noticeable effect on my filtering. I don't think it will work in the long run, but I guess we have to wait and see. These assholes are tenacious (but I'm not sure they're particularly clever).
I predict that Daniel Lyons will, after continuously having made completely false analysis and predictions on everything from SCO to Linux, either lose his job at Forbes (watch that MBA smile dissappear in a split second when he gets the slip) or be moved to the comics section, where he will at least do somethiing productive at Forbes.
Really?
You have evidence that past performance determines the employment prospects of financial analysts?
News to me. I think your prediction is a longer shot than "IBM apologizes to SCO, gives them billions of dollars and promises to never again make Linux compatible hardware."
So, I'm reading the opening paragraph and I get the idea already. This Honorable Herringbone or whoever is just a cheap hack with no real talent. But then I see the synopsis:
Look, there go some one-dimensional bad guys! Look, there goes the one-dimensional good guy (well, person)!
Damn, that sounds pretty cool! One dimensional heroes and villains slicing through our three-dimensional universe! (No, I'm not granting time dimensionality status!) Gosh, Flatland be damned, this is like Turbo Flatland++! Perhaps some two-dimensional villians try to trap the one-dimensional heroine in a three dimensional closet, but a fourth dimensional bystander rescues her.
Or so I thinks. But then I thinks again. Too bad. Stupid literary metaphors.
re: your example: what if you made money with that book (by whatever means), that violates the original author's IP? would the original author be entitled to make you stop or sue you for damages, etc.? My guess (again IANAL) is yes.
Let me see if I've got this straight.
I go to a bookstore and purchase a book on how to successfully invest in the stockmarket. Unbeknownst to me, that book infringes someone's copyright. It is your opinion that the infringed party can sue me to take away some of the money I've earned using skills I learned from the text?
Or, if that's too abstract, replace the skills of a howto book with the information in an automative manual, including diagrams. If I use a knockoff of a car manual that gives detailed instructions for car repair, you think that the author of the manual can sue me?
It's not obvious to me that you think this, because it's not obvious to me what you mean when you write: what if you made money with that book (by whatever means), that violates the original author's IP? What is "that"? If it's supposed to mean the book, then my examples seem to apply.
(Note: if all you mean to allege is that the book may be taken away from me, then perhaps you're right. At least, it's not obviously wrong to my naive brane. But if you mean something more, I'm doubtful.)
Of course, I'm not a lawyer either, and there might be a lawyer that agrees with my examples above. It's often dangerous to try reductio ad absurdum with lawyers in the room.
Since Debian (even for those smart ones out there using slackware, like i do) is really considered one of the real distros, if we hear that redhat has been atacked, we would just say that they diserve it and go on, it would be delivered in the respective mail list, and that was it.
This brings up an important point. How do we know it wasn't Red Hat that rooted the Debian server? They have motive and they know Linux and its vulnerabilities and everyone says they're no good.
Where was Red Hat on the night of the attack? I didn't see them.
...and many of the things that come installed with windows can be removed (movie creation, all the clearly extra bulk).
And many of the things can't be removed. And some of them come back the next time you install service packs.
In any case, why not let the OEM decide what software to install from what corporation? The point is that Microsoft is not installing these things out of selfless concern for the customers. They are installing them precisely because they will become dominant in new software fields this way.
But, no matter. I imagine we'll see the fruits of integrating messaging into the OS (this is what they're doing, right? Or not? I don't know). After all, the integration of IE has introduced users to many new features they couldn't have imagined before. Features for which Microsoft has recently offered bounties.
It is fairly typical of large "uncool" corporations to come late to the pop culture game and attempt a capitalization of said culture to render a bit of cache to their products.
I agree (warning: lame spelling flame: "cachet").
Aside: I'm still ambivalent about the Matrix.
It could also simply be that The Matrix is tired. When it initially entered the scene, the Wachowski Bros. genuinely came up with some innovative film making, decent set design and mood and some clever dialogue. Matrix II and III simply rehashed those themes only with "more and bigger".
Actually, I didn't bother seeing any Matrix movie until this summer, when I bought the first two on DVD (thanks to cheap Chinese bootlegs). So my ambivalence has little to do with a cheapening product, although I agree that the second one is not nearly as fun as the first. (Of course, they are all guaranteed to do well with the geek crowds, since they portray geeks as heroes -- just like journalism movies get the best newspaper reviews.)
What do you expect from an undergraduate philosophy course?
At CMU? Ayn Rand. Sadly, I got that too.
Don't get me wrong. In my experience, it is easier to deal with geeks in a philosophy course than with business students. But geeks come with their own, well, challenges. This includes their predisposition to believe that the best ideas are the most recent ideas, so why are we studying dead people?
Also, although this probably doesn't even bear mentioning, given the forum, I am not denying that I'm a geek too.
Microsoft represents the ragtag rebel alliance trying to save the majority sheeples from the all-powerful IBM-Linux Matrix?
Never mind remedial security courses for Microsoft programmers. Their ad-men need remedial courses in film interpretation and allegory.
Or someone needs to take their copies of 1984 away. I'm pretty sure that an ad campaign on freeing people from the Linux monopoly is a bit too unsubtle for, well, for anyone.
Aside: I'm still ambivalent about the Matrix. You would be too, if you had taught introductory philosophy courses at Carnegie Mellon. Three-quarters of the geeks in my course had signed up for philosophy because they thought it was just like the Matrix.
I don't mind if I never hear another Descartes/Wachowski comparison again. Especially if I never hear that Descartes would be better with more explosions and slo-mo bullets.
Yup... My list reads like the Who's Who of the Fortune 500... Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, Amazon, B&N, Apple, etc... I stick to buying from local retailers.
Shame that local retailers typically get their goods from the Fortune 500 companies that didn't make your list. The bigass multinational suppliers are not, I think, any better than the bigass retailers, but they're even harder to avoid.
Don't take this comment as a reason to stop trying to buy locally, of course. I've always preferred the local retailer, largely because I've found the service friendlier. I like when my shopkeeper knows who I am and what I like, and I've never found that with a big national chain. (Of course, now that I'm in the Netherlands, it takes only four locations to be a big national chain.)
Oh well, lost whatever point this had. Mark this offtopic, I reckon. (Enough conscience to advocate moderating my own post down, not enough to refrain from posting.)
Well, in any case, would *you* like to have thousands of geeks tossing d30s at you? That's one skill you *know* they've got...
d30? Kids today have no appreciation for the classics. In my day, we made do with the Plato's five perfect solids and a ten-sided die. But everyone knew that the ten-sided die was suspect.
(I suppose now someone should reply that in their day, there were only three perfect solids...)
Actually, I'm not sure if D&D originally used ten-sided dice. I think that was a later perversion, but I can't be certain. (I'm sure someone here knows, but no one is reading this thread anymore.)
I was actually thinking more along the lines of a fairly large group of people, each individual being able to tell you 156 places you can strike a person that will cause instant death, 20 medieval weapons in a common kitchen, and other stuff.
I'm not so sure that knowing which dice to make save throws and so on really counts as practical training in the martial arts.
(Not that there's anything wrong with gaming, mind you. I participated in more than my share of geek rites of passage, too.)
I don't know about you, but pissing off a bunch of gamers isn't my idea of "smart"
Yeah, sure, of course you're right. All the big movie studio heads are deeply concerned about the D&D faction. After all, piss them folk off and they'll whip out their +3 Blog of Scorn.
Just think what the AD&D crowd would do!
You are the Simpson's Comic Book Store Guy and I claim my $3.50.
I predict that this court case will enter the final stages just as Comet Hale-Bopp makes its return. Casual viewers may mistakenly believe that the SCO executives have committed suicide (or been suicided), when they are actually leaving their earthly containers for the next level. Just as observors seem mystified at SCO's current activities, believing the allegations are crazy and their actions silly, so will we lesser beings be unable to comprehend SCO's ascension to the next evolutionary frontier.
Comet Hale-Bopp has an orbital period of 2000 years. I am not sure whether this is evidence for or against my premonition.
(Yeah, yeah, I know this is in exceedingly poor taste, but so was the parent. Does that count as an excuse?)
If I own a website (and I do) I feel that I can publish/delete anything I want on my site. TIME.com is not part of the public domain; it is the sole property of TIME Magazine. If they want to pull something from thier website then that is for them to decide.
Certainly, what you write is literally true, but it doesn't remove concern.
Previously, and even currently, libraries keep hardcopies of publications like Time. But, as we become much more reliant on digital references, we will lose the permanence that is a basic assumption of all referring. This is the problem.
Once, we relied on paper references. These were difficult for people to find, but they couldn't be revoked by the author or publisher. Now, we're starting to rely more on electronic references. This simplifies the task for the reader, but relies on the good will and permanence of the publisher.
It's not a big deal in this particular case, as far as I understand. The article is part of Time's regular (real-honest-to-God-paper) issue, right? So, it's not really lost, but it's certainly less accessible than it could be and than it was just last month. This is disturbing.
It's more disturbing when one considers that most people likely receive their news from a handful of very large corporations whose activities are likely newsworthy. One shouldn't rely on big corporations to accurately report on excesses of big corporations.
I'm not exactly a goth. I just think that any post that reads better with Sinatra's "My Way" in the background doesn't deserve positive moderation, that's all. (If Elvis's "My Way" sounds better then the post should be censored entirely.)
It's a matter of taste, I suppose. But rather than "kinda uplifting and well put", I would've chosen "cloying".
Insightful? The parent was insightful? "I will always be a student. I will graduate life when I am dead, and perhaps move on to post-graduate work," is insightful? Guideposts is more insightful. See this compendium of real deep thoughts, I suppose.
I suppose that Hallmark cards now count as Buddhist koans and Chicken Soup for the Soul is an example of a deep philosophical treatise.
I await the author's Prologomena to Any Future Hackonomy or Tractatus Hackaticus.
(Yes, yes, I know. My tortured attempts at big-sounding words using "Hack" is worse than the glurge of the parent. Oh well.)
Like others, I'm a bit ashamed that such an extended caricature of the free software movement affects me like it does. But it really is remarkable how good Howard is at knocking down straw men. Where does he see anyone advocating free software as a means of avoiding all software costs?
Of course, his point (such as it is) is stronger than that. He seems to say that, if quality matters, one ought to go with proprietary, closed source software. Which prompts the question: Are Apache, Linux, FreeBSD, Emacs[1], LaTeX, etc., merely successful aberrations in an unsuccessful paradigm? (If so, what can one say about security holes in IE, IIS, etc? Are those unfortunate aberrations of a process that is destined to bring out quality software?)
Rather than creating argument after argument explaining why free software will never work, he ought to spend some time explaining why so many users (including technical managers) believe that free software is already working well for them.
OK, I've been doing a little background reading, and my question is, how are internal memos copyrightable? Isn't a copyright supposed to be issued to a work for sale? Unless someone in the company is selling copies of the internal memos, how is it protected?
Copyright is not limited to works for sale or even to works with a commercial value. Good thing, too, since various free software licenses might be a bit iffy if they were restricted to works for sale. (Yes, I know that much or most free software is sold, but some is never intended to be sold at all.)
If they wanted to protect the information, couldn't they invoke Trade Secrets? It would seem to me a better path than copyright.
As far as I know, there is no legal protection for trade secrets. So "invoking" trade secret protections is not a very good strategy.
I won't comment on the "sedition" claim.
As usual, if you want to really know the answer to your question with some certainty, then go to someone a bit more authoritative than Slashdot readers. Certainly, I haven't any legal training.
Even if Diebold wins, the documents that were linked to might well end up as part of the public record, and won't be censorable, then.
Yes, that might be what happens. But isn't it also likely that Diebold asks the court to seal the records involving the documents? If so, is the court likely to do so?
I really don't know the answer to these questions. I just don't think that it's obvious at all that the Diebold documents will become part of the public record.
Of course, it may be obvious to someone with a smattering of legal education.
A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
That comma causes more problems... but the subject of the sentance is "A well regulated Militia" and not "the people."
If you insist on interpreting the constitution by appeals to grammatical diagramming, then learn some grammar. The subject of that sentence is clearly "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms".
I will refrain from making any inferences about the propriety of gun control on the basis of this here grammar flame.
Did you read any of the responses patiently explaining that the use of Symantec product in a public library is a civil liberties issue, your 47 denials notwithstanding.
1. My messages were posted back-to-back within a span of a few minutes. Your implication that I posted once, waited, then posted again, waited, then posted again, such that I had time to see any replies first, is false.
That is not an excuse. That's a presentation of the problem.
Repeating the same point several times in a span of just a couple of minutes is that to which I was objecting.
As far as your responses to the public libraries objection goes, fine. I wasn't necessarily pushing that argument. I just wanted something different from you than the same damn point over and bloody over.
Slashdot Mirror
Poor Disillusioned. Takes the time to correct spelling mistakes and what thanks does he get? A slashdotting for his website.
Hands up all ya'll who went to Dissillusioned's site, but not to any other link in the article. (My hand is up, I'm afraid.)
I trained it with 2 days of e-mail (~700 items - I'm on most of the GCC lists) yesterday and the day before and today I only had to mark 2 out of 160 e-mails as junk.
Once everyone uses this, spam e-mail will disapear because it isn't profitable anymore.
I assume that mozilla is using Bayesian filters, which is what I use, too.
Lately, spammers have been adding randomly selected words to place at the end of the spam in a meaningless "paragraph". The aim is that either these words suffice to get the spam marked non-junk or, more likely, that the presence of these words will increase the likelihood of later false positives.
So far, this tactic hasn't had any noticeable effect on my filtering. I don't think it will work in the long run, but I guess we have to wait and see. These assholes are tenacious (but I'm not sure they're particularly clever).
I predict that Daniel Lyons will, after continuously having made completely false analysis and predictions on everything from SCO to Linux, either lose his job at Forbes (watch that MBA smile dissappear in a split second when he gets the slip) or be moved to the comics section, where he will at least do somethiing productive at Forbes.
Really?
You have evidence that past performance determines the employment prospects of financial analysts?
News to me. I think your prediction is a longer shot than "IBM apologizes to SCO, gives them billions of dollars and promises to never again make Linux compatible hardware."
Slashdot traffic is the kind that knows how to get it for FREE...
Where, sadly, "it" refers to pornography. Not quite the most desirable know-how.
So, I'm reading the opening paragraph and I get the idea already. This Honorable Herringbone or whoever is just a cheap hack with no real talent. But then I see the synopsis:
Look, there go some one-dimensional bad guys! Look, there goes the one-dimensional good guy (well, person)!
Damn, that sounds pretty cool! One dimensional heroes and villains slicing through our three-dimensional universe! (No, I'm not granting time dimensionality status!) Gosh, Flatland be damned, this is like Turbo Flatland++! Perhaps some two-dimensional villians try to trap the one-dimensional heroine in a three dimensional closet, but a fourth dimensional bystander rescues her.
Or so I thinks. But then I thinks again. Too bad. Stupid literary metaphors.
re: your example: what if you made money with that book (by whatever means), that violates the original author's IP? would the original author be entitled to make you stop or sue you for damages, etc.? My guess (again IANAL) is yes.
Let me see if I've got this straight.
I go to a bookstore and purchase a book on how to successfully invest in the stockmarket. Unbeknownst to me, that book infringes someone's copyright. It is your opinion that the infringed party can sue me to take away some of the money I've earned using skills I learned from the text?
Or, if that's too abstract, replace the skills of a howto book with the information in an automative manual, including diagrams. If I use a knockoff of a car manual that gives detailed instructions for car repair, you think that the author of the manual can sue me?
It's not obvious to me that you think this, because it's not obvious to me what you mean when you write: what if you made money with that book (by whatever means), that violates the original author's IP? What is "that"? If it's supposed to mean the book, then my examples seem to apply.
(Note: if all you mean to allege is that the book may be taken away from me, then perhaps you're right. At least, it's not obviously wrong to my naive brane. But if you mean something more, I'm doubtful.)
Of course, I'm not a lawyer either, and there might be a lawyer that agrees with my examples above. It's often dangerous to try reductio ad absurdum with lawyers in the room.
Since Debian (even for those smart ones out there using slackware, like i do) is really considered one of the real distros, if we hear that redhat has been atacked, we would just say that they diserve it and go on, it would be delivered in the respective mail list, and that was it.
This brings up an important point. How do we know it wasn't Red Hat that rooted the Debian server? They have motive and they know Linux and its vulnerabilities and everyone says they're no good.
Where was Red Hat on the night of the attack? I didn't see them.
...and many of the things that come installed with windows can be removed (movie creation, all the clearly extra bulk).
And many of the things can't be removed. And some of them come back the next time you install service packs.
In any case, why not let the OEM decide what software to install from what corporation? The point is that Microsoft is not installing these things out of selfless concern for the customers. They are installing them precisely because they will become dominant in new software fields this way.
But, no matter. I imagine we'll see the fruits of integrating messaging into the OS (this is what they're doing, right? Or not? I don't know). After all, the integration of IE has introduced users to many new features they couldn't have imagined before. Features for which Microsoft has recently offered bounties.
It is fairly typical of large "uncool" corporations to come late to the pop culture game and attempt a capitalization of said culture to render a bit of cache to their products.
I agree (warning: lame spelling flame: "cachet").
Aside: I'm still ambivalent about the Matrix.
It could also simply be that The Matrix is tired. When it initially entered the scene, the Wachowski Bros. genuinely came up with some innovative film making, decent set design and mood and some clever dialogue. Matrix II and III simply rehashed those themes only with "more and bigger".
Actually, I didn't bother seeing any Matrix movie until this summer, when I bought the first two on DVD (thanks to cheap Chinese bootlegs). So my ambivalence has little to do with a cheapening product, although I agree that the second one is not nearly as fun as the first. (Of course, they are all guaranteed to do well with the geek crowds, since they portray geeks as heroes -- just like journalism movies get the best newspaper reviews.)
What do you expect from an undergraduate philosophy course?
At CMU? Ayn Rand. Sadly, I got that too.
Don't get me wrong. In my experience, it is easier to deal with geeks in a philosophy course than with business students. But geeks come with their own, well, challenges. This includes their predisposition to believe that the best ideas are the most recent ideas, so why are we studying dead people?
Also, although this probably doesn't even bear mentioning, given the forum, I am not denying that I'm a geek too.
I don't get it.
Microsoft represents the ragtag rebel alliance trying to save the majority sheeples from the all-powerful IBM-Linux Matrix?
Never mind remedial security courses for Microsoft programmers. Their ad-men need remedial courses in film interpretation and allegory.
Or someone needs to take their copies of 1984 away. I'm pretty sure that an ad campaign on freeing people from the Linux monopoly is a bit too unsubtle for, well, for anyone.
Aside: I'm still ambivalent about the Matrix. You would be too, if you had taught introductory philosophy courses at Carnegie Mellon. Three-quarters of the geeks in my course had signed up for philosophy because they thought it was just like the Matrix.
I don't mind if I never hear another Descartes/Wachowski comparison again. Especially if I never hear that Descartes would be better with more explosions and slo-mo bullets.
The primary purpose of government/law is to further the advancement of society; but unfortunately sometimes we lose sight of that.
Maybe we lose sight of that because damned few of us agreed that was the purpose to begin with.
Some of us might even wonder whether the "advancement of society" was a meaningful phrase at all.
Yup... My list reads like the Who's Who of the Fortune 500... Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, Amazon, B&N, Apple, etc... I stick to buying from local retailers.
Shame that local retailers typically get their goods from the Fortune 500 companies that didn't make your list. The bigass multinational suppliers are not, I think, any better than the bigass retailers, but they're even harder to avoid.
Don't take this comment as a reason to stop trying to buy locally, of course. I've always preferred the local retailer, largely because I've found the service friendlier. I like when my shopkeeper knows who I am and what I like, and I've never found that with a big national chain. (Of course, now that I'm in the Netherlands, it takes only four locations to be a big national chain.)
Oh well, lost whatever point this had. Mark this offtopic, I reckon. (Enough conscience to advocate moderating my own post down, not enough to refrain from posting.)
Did [D&D] start using d10s?
Maybe I'm just mis-remembering. D&D was not the only roleplaying game I played.
Well, in any case, would *you* like to have thousands of geeks tossing d30s at you? That's one skill you *know* they've got...
d30? Kids today have no appreciation for the classics. In my day, we made do with the Plato's five perfect solids and a ten-sided die. But everyone knew that the ten-sided die was suspect.
(I suppose now someone should reply that in their day, there were only three perfect solids...)
Actually, I'm not sure if D&D originally used ten-sided dice. I think that was a later perversion, but I can't be certain. (I'm sure someone here knows, but no one is reading this thread anymore.)
I was actually thinking more along the lines of a fairly large group of people, each individual being able to tell you 156 places you can strike a person that will cause instant death, 20 medieval weapons in a common kitchen, and other stuff.
I'm not so sure that knowing which dice to make save throws and so on really counts as practical training in the martial arts.
(Not that there's anything wrong with gaming, mind you. I participated in more than my share of geek rites of passage, too.)
I don't know about you, but pissing off a bunch of gamers isn't my idea of "smart"
Yeah, sure, of course you're right. All the big movie studio heads are deeply concerned about the D&D faction. After all, piss them folk off and they'll whip out their +3 Blog of Scorn.
Just think what the AD&D crowd would do!
You are the Simpson's Comic Book Store Guy and I claim my $3.50.
My premonition is similar.
I predict that this court case will enter the final stages just as Comet Hale-Bopp makes its return. Casual viewers may mistakenly believe that the SCO executives have committed suicide (or been suicided), when they are actually leaving their earthly containers for the next level. Just as observors seem mystified at SCO's current activities, believing the allegations are crazy and their actions silly, so will we lesser beings be unable to comprehend SCO's ascension to the next evolutionary frontier.
Comet Hale-Bopp has an orbital period of 2000 years. I am not sure whether this is evidence for or against my premonition.
(Yeah, yeah, I know this is in exceedingly poor taste, but so was the parent. Does that count as an excuse?)
If I own a website (and I do) I feel that I can publish/delete anything I want on my site. TIME.com is not part of the public domain; it is the sole property of TIME Magazine. If they want to pull something from thier website then that is for them to decide.
Certainly, what you write is literally true, but it doesn't remove concern.
Previously, and even currently, libraries keep hardcopies of publications like Time. But, as we become much more reliant on digital references, we will lose the permanence that is a basic assumption of all referring. This is the problem.
Once, we relied on paper references. These were difficult for people to find, but they couldn't be revoked by the author or publisher. Now, we're starting to rely more on electronic references. This simplifies the task for the reader, but relies on the good will and permanence of the publisher.
It's not a big deal in this particular case, as far as I understand. The article is part of Time's regular (real-honest-to-God-paper) issue, right? So, it's not really lost, but it's certainly less accessible than it could be and than it was just last month. This is disturbing.
It's more disturbing when one considers that most people likely receive their news from a handful of very large corporations whose activities are likely newsworthy. One shouldn't rely on big corporations to accurately report on excesses of big corporations.
But, well, there we are.
I'm not exactly a goth. I just think that any post that reads better with Sinatra's "My Way" in the background doesn't deserve positive moderation, that's all. (If Elvis's "My Way" sounds better then the post should be censored entirely.)
It's a matter of taste, I suppose. But rather than "kinda uplifting and well put", I would've chosen "cloying".
Insightful? The parent was insightful? "I will always be a student. I will graduate life when I am dead, and perhaps move on to post-graduate work," is insightful? Guideposts is more insightful. See this compendium of real deep thoughts, I suppose.
I suppose that Hallmark cards now count as Buddhist koans and Chicken Soup for the Soul is an example of a deep philosophical treatise.
I await the author's Prologomena to Any Future Hackonomy or Tractatus Hackaticus.
(Yes, yes, I know. My tortured attempts at big-sounding words using "Hack" is worse than the glurge of the parent. Oh well.)
Like others, I'm a bit ashamed that such an extended caricature of the free software movement affects me like it does. But it really is remarkable how good Howard is at knocking down straw men. Where does he see anyone advocating free software as a means of avoiding all software costs?
Of course, his point (such as it is) is stronger than that. He seems to say that, if quality matters, one ought to go with proprietary, closed source software. Which prompts the question: Are Apache, Linux, FreeBSD, Emacs[1], LaTeX, etc., merely successful aberrations in an unsuccessful paradigm? (If so, what can one say about security holes in IE, IIS, etc? Are those unfortunate aberrations of a process that is destined to bring out quality software?)
Rather than creating argument after argument explaining why free software will never work, he ought to spend some time explaining why so many users (including technical managers) believe that free software is already working well for them.
[1] Replace with VI depending on your religion.
OK, I've been doing a little background reading, and my question is, how are internal memos copyrightable? Isn't a copyright supposed to be issued to a work for sale? Unless someone in the company is selling copies of the internal memos, how is it protected?
Copyright is not limited to works for sale or even to works with a commercial value. Good thing, too, since various free software licenses might be a bit iffy if they were restricted to works for sale. (Yes, I know that much or most free software is sold, but some is never intended to be sold at all.)
If they wanted to protect the information, couldn't they invoke Trade Secrets? It would seem to me a better path than copyright.
As far as I know, there is no legal protection for trade secrets. So "invoking" trade secret protections is not a very good strategy.
I won't comment on the "sedition" claim.
As usual, if you want to really know the answer to your question with some certainty, then go to someone a bit more authoritative than Slashdot readers. Certainly, I haven't any legal training.
Even if Diebold wins, the documents that were linked to might well end up as part of the public record, and won't be censorable, then.
Yes, that might be what happens. But isn't it also likely that Diebold asks the court to seal the records involving the documents? If so, is the court likely to do so?
I really don't know the answer to these questions. I just don't think that it's obvious at all that the Diebold documents will become part of the public record.
Of course, it may be obvious to someone with a smattering of legal education.
A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
That comma causes more problems... but the subject of the sentance is "A well regulated Militia" and not "the people."
If you insist on interpreting the constitution by appeals to grammatical diagramming, then learn some grammar. The subject of that sentence is clearly "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms".
I will refrain from making any inferences about the propriety of gun control on the basis of this here grammar flame.
Did you read any of the responses patiently explaining that the use of Symantec product in a public library is a civil liberties issue, your 47 denials notwithstanding.
1. My messages were posted back-to-back within a span of a few minutes. Your implication that I posted once, waited, then posted again, waited, then posted again, such that I had time to see any replies first, is false.
That is not an excuse. That's a presentation of the problem.
Repeating the same point several times in a span of just a couple of minutes is that to which I was objecting.
As far as your responses to the public libraries objection goes, fine. I wasn't necessarily pushing that argument. I just wanted something different from you than the same damn point over and bloody over.