All entities are profit-seeking; some are just choosing to suppress the urge. You shouldn't trust "free" services either. Only trust architectures you've verified for yourself.
If you pick a vague enough screenname, then it becomes orders of magnitude more difficult to search for it. Take mine, for example. Just how many references for "/" do you suppose google will come up with? Answer: it won't even try. Heck, I can't even efficiently search for a comment I made on a thread where I know I posted without first going to my userpage.
Sadly, they discontinued the service in the wake of the Heavens Gate cult suicide. Insane people are just too likely to make claims against the policy.
Hey, no more keys anymore, they can identify you by your DNA when you want into the lab
Great. We already have parasites that escape their hosts' immune systems by incorporating molecules from host tissue into the surface of the parasite, thereby appearing to be "self" tissue rather than "non-self must-eradicate" tissue. When this tech gets off the ground, how long will it be until we see similar behavior on the macro-macroscopic scale?
Your arguments are unfortunately flawed, and we should work together to fix them, because I share your concerns and aims.
This device isn't "taking a part of you", for the simple reason that you're actually handing it your "parts" by shedding them into the environment. This is unlikely to be considered an unconstitutional "search" on privacy grounds, for the reason that it's non-invasive. Look at the case law: it's constitutional for the government to fly a plane over your fences and peer down at your greenhouse, and police are allowed to search cars exhaustively without violating privacy as long as they don't open the door. A fifth-mendment defense won't work, since no one has been charged with any crime to face, and far more invasive extractions have been sustained (blood/urinalysis tests). Sure, this sort of thing shocks the concious but it doesn't shock enough people's conciouses. Unfortunately it looks like the only way to prohibit this sort of thing on a constitutional level is either to overrule a lot of precedent (yay!) or pass a constitutional amendment.
PS, not all abusive governments have been overthrown.
PPS, civilization isn't advancing. It's just getting more tech-happy.
Ah, but an idea backed up with an open-source-oriented webpage (sourceforge.net) has always a headline on slashdot made. Besides, since some of the planning has been done, it will soon be time for bandwagoners to start contributing code, and it's nice to have such a heads-up.
Indeed. There seems to be some simple harmonic motion in the cycle between this rumor and the rumor that Apple is about to go out of business -- the longer it's been since one rumor was published, the more likely it is for the other to pop up.
Semantics aside, it's irrelevent, because such "labeled not for resale" restrictions aren't legally binding. You're not only allowed to sell the shampoo bottles separately, you're allowed to "improve" them and turn them into sexual aids, if you so desire. The general rule is that restrictions on future sales are void, and this ruling merely extends that rule to software, which companies have historically tried to pass off as a liscensed object rather than a sold object.
That's a lovely theory, but I'm reluctant to buy it. Perhaps in the longrun, they may benefit from an increased user base, but in the shortrun, they're going to lose sales to resellers that may have otherwise been first sales. They don't get a dime from resale, so how would they think to get any short-term benefits? Historically, they've always encouraged piracy to build a userbase until such time as the market can support paying for it, upon which time they've always cracked down. The legal right to resale offers MS no benefits over that strategy, and moreover prevents that last crucial step of cracking down and enforcing new sales.
However In the past many computer makers charged you for an operating system regardless of if you purchased one with the system or not. Perhaps this is why your system with linux installed cost the same as it did for one with windows.
There's no need to hide behind qualifiers such as "perhaps". This is in fact the reason.
You're still allowed to take the entire family unit and resell that, even if you're not allowed to split it up. Using your analogy, you're still not allowed to sell the cd's individual files separately, but you should still be able to sell the original cd itself.
Because fair-use isn't a boundless priviledge to make infinite copies without use restrictions. There are specific uses for which you're allowed to make fair-use copies (such as backup), and infinite installs isn't one of them.
What is far more interesting is the implication for reverse engineering, since absent a liscense or contractual obligation to the contrary, reverse engineering is permitted for all normal products.
You make it sound like Microsoft has desperately wanted people to be able to resell Windows, but if it weren't for this court ruling, Microsoft would have no recourse of its own to allow that. They themselves have been the ones enforcing EULAs with that very prohibition. Did you mispeak, or did I misread?
Q: What is the difference between a musician and an actor?
A: The actor gets paid.
You clearly don't know many actors and how little they get paid. The difference may be better characterized as how actors are at least starting to unionize and demand better compensation. Perhaps it's time for musicians to form their own guilds.
As long as one is being anonymous via a pseudonym that can't be linked to its real-world owner, most of the issues associated with having such detailed databases are minimized. Does it really bother you as much when a company knows that "someone" has your preferences as when the company knows that you have them? They nevertheless gain a marketing advantage from such knowledge, but it isn't a direct tax upon your soul, and it's probably a fair exchange for the service rendered.
It means that the standard isn't a viable enough threat for Microsoft to go to all the trouble of embracing, extending, and extinguishing. It's along the lines of how some of the best praise is the hatred of thine enemies.
But that was exactly the same strategy employed with passenger pigeons, and look what happened to that once "infinite" supply. I'm arguing we should take a more conservationalist approach. Do you really want our children to ask us, some day, "Were there really script kiddies?" Do we really want only to respond "Yes, Virginia. When the earth was younger and times were simpler, there roved children not much older than you, who could bring down entire corporations with the click of a button running a script that someone more intelligent than they had written and which they couldn't write for themselves if their lives depended on it." Will we be satisfied to take our children to the museum and show them the stuffed "last living script kiddy" in a realistic but still fake diorama of cheap porn and unfinished highschool English assignments? Will we?
And I don't think I'm alone in thinking that script kiddies, while annoying, are a natural resource, who play an important ecological role in thinning the herd and weeding out the week among sysadmins (who are too lazy/stupid to maintain the latest bugfixes) and their servers. Let's make sure that as law-enforcement efforts are stepped up, the EPA, the Forestry Services, and the Fish and Wildlife Services establish some refuges to preserve the species as others try to drive it to extinction.
I agree with the television example (which isn't yours originally, and you should at least try to provide a citation or at least disclaim authorship), I disagree with its utility as an analogy. Customers are actually directly consuming CPUs, whereas tv-watchers are only actively consuming the program and try their best to avoid consuming the advertising. If Intel raises the prices on its chips, then that will directly affect consumers' ability to purchase those chips, whereas if stations raise prices on advertising spots, that only indirectly affects consumers (by affecting stations' revenues and subsequent ability to produce programs).
Slashdot Mirror
All entities are profit-seeking; some are just choosing to suppress the urge. You shouldn't trust "free" services either. Only trust architectures you've verified for yourself.
If you pick a vague enough screenname, then it becomes orders of magnitude more difficult to search for it. Take mine, for example. Just how many references for "/" do you suppose google will come up with? Answer: it won't even try. Heck, I can't even efficiently search for a comment I made on a thread where I know I posted without first going to my userpage.
"But, your honor, VA/Andover/Slashdot is running on Linux machines, and Linux machines never crash. Not even for hardware failures."
Then you should've insured yourself against that possibility. You only have yourself to blame.
Simple. You crack open the cartridge, unwind the spool, and hang yourself with the tape. But of course, that just creates more insurance problems. ;-)
Don't laugh. The British firm Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Pearson actually offered a policy against Alien impregnation.
Sadly, they discontinued the service in the wake of the Heavens Gate cult suicide. Insane people are just too likely to make claims against the policy.
Hey, no more keys anymore, they can identify you by your DNA when you want into the lab
Great. We already have parasites that escape their hosts' immune systems by incorporating molecules from host tissue into the surface of the parasite, thereby appearing to be "self" tissue rather than "non-self must-eradicate" tissue. When this tech gets off the ground, how long will it be until we see similar behavior on the macro-macroscopic scale?
Your arguments are unfortunately flawed, and we should work together to fix them, because I share your concerns and aims.
This device isn't "taking a part of you", for the simple reason that you're actually handing it your "parts" by shedding them into the environment. This is unlikely to be considered an unconstitutional "search" on privacy grounds, for the reason that it's non-invasive. Look at the case law: it's constitutional for the government to fly a plane over your fences and peer down at your greenhouse, and police are allowed to search cars exhaustively without violating privacy as long as they don't open the door. A fifth-mendment defense won't work, since no one has been charged with any crime to face, and far more invasive extractions have been sustained (blood/urinalysis tests). Sure, this sort of thing shocks the concious but it doesn't shock enough people's conciouses. Unfortunately it looks like the only way to prohibit this sort of thing on a constitutional level is either to overrule a lot of precedent (yay!) or pass a constitutional amendment.
PS, not all abusive governments have been overthrown.
PPS, civilization isn't advancing. It's just getting more tech-happy.
Ah, but an idea backed up with an open-source-oriented webpage (sourceforge.net) has always a headline on slashdot made. Besides, since some of the planning has been done, it will soon be time for bandwagoners to start contributing code, and it's nice to have such a heads-up.
Indeed. There seems to be some simple harmonic motion in the cycle between this rumor and the rumor that Apple is about to go out of business -- the longer it's been since one rumor was published, the more likely it is for the other to pop up.
Well, if nothing else, it should drastically increase the amount of paperwork filled out at spermbanks....
Semantics aside, it's irrelevent, because such "labeled not for resale" restrictions aren't legally binding. You're not only allowed to sell the shampoo bottles separately, you're allowed to "improve" them and turn them into sexual aids, if you so desire. The general rule is that restrictions on future sales are void, and this ruling merely extends that rule to software, which companies have historically tried to pass off as a liscensed object rather than a sold object.
That's a lovely theory, but I'm reluctant to buy it. Perhaps in the longrun, they may benefit from an increased user base, but in the shortrun, they're going to lose sales to resellers that may have otherwise been first sales. They don't get a dime from resale, so how would they think to get any short-term benefits? Historically, they've always encouraged piracy to build a userbase until such time as the market can support paying for it, upon which time they've always cracked down. The legal right to resale offers MS no benefits over that strategy, and moreover prevents that last crucial step of cracking down and enforcing new sales.
However In the past many computer makers charged you for an operating system regardless of if you purchased one with the system or not. Perhaps this is why your system with linux installed cost the same as it did for one with windows.
There's no need to hide behind qualifiers such as "perhaps". This is in fact the reason.
You're still allowed to take the entire family unit and resell that, even if you're not allowed to split it up. Using your analogy, you're still not allowed to sell the cd's individual files separately, but you should still be able to sell the original cd itself.
Because fair-use isn't a boundless priviledge to make infinite copies without use restrictions. There are specific uses for which you're allowed to make fair-use copies (such as backup), and infinite installs isn't one of them.
What is far more interesting is the implication for reverse engineering, since absent a liscense or contractual obligation to the contrary, reverse engineering is permitted for all normal products.
You make it sound like Microsoft has desperately wanted people to be able to resell Windows, but if it weren't for this court ruling, Microsoft would have no recourse of its own to allow that. They themselves have been the ones enforcing EULAs with that very prohibition. Did you mispeak, or did I misread?
You clearly don't know many actors and how little they get paid. The difference may be better characterized as how actors are at least starting to unionize and demand better compensation. Perhaps it's time for musicians to form their own guilds.
As long as one is being anonymous via a pseudonym that can't be linked to its real-world owner, most of the issues associated with having such detailed databases are minimized. Does it really bother you as much when a company knows that "someone" has your preferences as when the company knows that you have them? They nevertheless gain a marketing advantage from such knowledge, but it isn't a direct tax upon your soul, and it's probably a fair exchange for the service rendered.
It means that the standard isn't a viable enough threat for Microsoft to go to all the trouble of embracing, extending, and extinguishing. It's along the lines of how some of the best praise is the hatred of thine enemies.
But that was exactly the same strategy employed with passenger pigeons, and look what happened to that once "infinite" supply. I'm arguing we should take a more conservationalist approach. Do you really want our children to ask us, some day, "Were there really script kiddies?" Do we really want only to respond "Yes, Virginia. When the earth was younger and times were simpler, there roved children not much older than you, who could bring down entire corporations with the click of a button running a script that someone more intelligent than they had written and which they couldn't write for themselves if their lives depended on it." Will we be satisfied to take our children to the museum and show them the stuffed "last living script kiddy" in a realistic but still fake diorama of cheap porn and unfinished highschool English assignments? Will we?
MacOSX is using parts (lots) of BSD, not the other way around.
And I don't think I'm alone in thinking that script kiddies, while annoying, are a natural resource, who play an important ecological role in thinning the herd and weeding out the week among sysadmins (who are too lazy/stupid to maintain the latest bugfixes) and their servers. Let's make sure that as law-enforcement efforts are stepped up, the EPA, the Forestry Services, and the Fish and Wildlife Services establish some refuges to preserve the species as others try to drive it to extinction.
I agree with the television example (which isn't yours originally, and you should at least try to provide a citation or at least disclaim authorship), I disagree with its utility as an analogy. Customers are actually directly consuming CPUs, whereas tv-watchers are only actively consuming the program and try their best to avoid consuming the advertising. If Intel raises the prices on its chips, then that will directly affect consumers' ability to purchase those chips, whereas if stations raise prices on advertising spots, that only indirectly affects consumers (by affecting stations' revenues and subsequent ability to produce programs).
Sure you can. You just have to shake it really fast. Like a tuning fork, but with less resonance.