Alternatively, 'phone their helpdesk and ask if the mail is genuine. If it isn't, they'll almost certainly want to know that someone is trying to scam their customers, so they can warn the rest.
Been there, done that, received polite indifference.
There'a an easy way to deal with that - never enter personal information at a site reached by clicking on a link in an email. If you get a notice that you need to update some piece of data, go to the site using the means you would reach it normally, whether that be via a bookmark or typing it in manually.
Lets be clear on this: SCO has never even claimed to have Unix patents.
Actually, Darl's claimed that several times. He's claimed to have licensed patents to Microsoft, and he threatened to sue Linus for patent infringement (although he quickly backed down, claiming he wasn't talking about patents).
And the message was: "We hold more patents than any other company in the world, and we can cut you off from all your revenue with just 4 of our patents. If the judge doesn't like those, we'll find 4 more. Welcome to the big leagues."
Why would pod SCO care if their sales of software was eliminated? Their intended revenue source is litigation, not software!
I have ways around that. But most websites which I register at don't display my email address to the public, so I'm primarily at risk from their mailing lists being stolen/sold. I've had that happen, but the problem is still limited to blocking the compromised email folder.
Yes, but, for now at least, there are still plenty of addresses from people who don't spam-guard, enough that writing those 10 lines of perl isn't even really worth it.
It isn't even necessary to obfuscate addresses to foil many spammers. I generally use email addresses of the format user+folder@domain, and virtually all spammers who harvest the address either spam userfolder@domain, or folder@domain. It's nice for spammers to identify themselves, while not obfuscating my email address.
He contributed to the development of the Internet, not to the creation of the Internet. If Robert Lutz said that he took the initiative in the creation of the Corvette, then argued that was true because he ensured the funding of the development of the Corvette C6, you'd call him a liar. Al Gore did the same thing in claiming to have taken the initiative in the creation of the Internet.
Hehe, Nice spin. But read a little further in the article.
I read the entire article before posting.
Al Gore's contributions to the internet
Pure spin. Gore didn't claim to "contribute" to the internet, he claimed to have taken the initiative in creating it, when it was created prior to his contributions.
In Milwaukee, at least, they require that anything other than sneakers be removed. Even where it isn't required, it souldn't be more than a couple minutes shoeless to put them through anyways.
AOL-TimeWarner is the parent company of CNN. They are a mega-media company. They are controlled by millionaires. They want agressive expansion and the ability to buy up more media outlets.
And they primarily support Democrats. According to opensecrets.org, two thirds of Time Warner contributions in the 2000 election cycle went to Democrats. And that wasn't an abberation - looking at the combined AOL Time Warner donor profile (the merger was in 2001), the lowest percentage of contributions going to Democrats was 53% in 1996, and the total since 1990 went 66% to Democrats.
So yes, they are part of the right-wing media because they kiss Bush's ass. How could a "left-wing" company spend so much time wailing on Clinton???
Because it didn't. CNN didn't get the nickname "Clinton News Network" because it was amongst the first to report Clinton scandals, but because it was amongst the last. It was to the Clinton administration what Fox News is to the Bush administration.
But he didn't claim to have taken part in the commercialization of the Internet, he claimed to have taken the initiative in the creation of the Internet. Even defenders of the statement are forced to concede that that was not possible.
Clearly, then, if we take Gore literally at his word, he could not have "taken the initiative in creating the Internet." As the ARPANET moved from research to deployment, Gore was finishing college and serving in the Army in Vietnam. From 1976 to 1985, Gore served in the House of Representatives. From 1985 to 1992, he served in the Senate. The record shows that his interest in national computer networking issues became acute during his years in the Senate - when the Internet clearly was fully in operation.
Spin all you like, but while I'll concede that he didn't claim to "invent" the Internet, he still took credit for helping to create something that was in place before he came around.
From the transcript of Vice President Gore on CNN's 'Late Edition', March 9, 1999
GORE: Well, I will be offering -- I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be.
But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
I didn't realize that CNN was part of the right-wing media.
Check the voting on the original bill, not the conference report. Only 7 Democrats and 2 Republicans voted against the original bill, which contained the expansion of the FBI "inspection" powers. Items may have been added in the conference with the Senate that more Democrats found objectionable, but it wasn't the reduction in privacy.
If you're going to think about that, keep in mind that Wired got its facts wrong. According to the bill summary, the 264-163 vote (roll call 649) which was presented as having taken place in June actually took place on 20 Nov, and was to agree to the conference report. Likewise, the Senate voice vote in November was to agree to the conference report. The actual vote on the bill as sent to the Senate, on 27 Jun, was 410-9 (roll call 333). Contrary to thier claims of opposing the legislation, both Rep. Betty McCollum and Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter voted for the bill in June, where section 334 of the bill is essentially identical to section 374 of the conference report. The Senate passed its version of the bill by unanimous consent on 31 Jul, also containing an essentially identical section 354. This was not a provision "slipped into the Intelligence Act at the 11th hour". Rather, it's a provision that politicians are now experiencing "buyer's remorse" over.
Many of the comments here are "SCO has yet to prove it", and yet people fail to realize that SCO does not yet have the *requirement* to prove it.
SCO was required to provide the evidence supporting its claims several months ago. It was required to state its claims with specificity several months ago. It has failed to do either, to the point that the court was forced to order it to do so.
In fact, to do so now would probably be a poor legal strategy.
Forcing the court to issue an order telling you to do what you were already required to do is a poor legal strategy.
The same thing happens in proprietary software. Perhaps there's a lower rate of attrition in proptietary software once it's past the proposal stage, but I think that has a lot to do with the argument "We've already spent $bigbucks on the BlackHole project, do you want that to go to waste?", while with open source, if a project doesn't actually meet a need, the project is most likely going to wither away.
logitech has had several generations of mice with a button or more than one that falls under the thumb...
They do? I've seen ones I've seen have buttons which would be under my pinky, which isn't exactly useful, but never one where the extra buttons would be under my thumb.
The researchers never stated (in any article that I read) that they had a limited supply of fuel, or that selling him fuel was any kind hardship.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Antarctica New Zealand chief executive officer Lou Sanson said "It's very unclear that at McMurdo or Scott base we have the fuel he needs."
Except......this guy didn't ram his plane into a remote snowbank or something -- he landed it at a refueling station.
No, he didn't. He landed at a research station. Unlike your imaginary example, McMurdo Station isn't in the business of selling fuel, and Johanson has no reasonable expectation to be able to purchase fuel there.
Think about it in terms of the nVidia binary modules. The kernel is GPL and the nVidia wrappers are written specifically for Linux. Therefor the wrapper must be under the GPL. If the wrapper is under the GPL and the nVidia driver itself is linked with this wrapper code..what licence is the core part of the driver under?
What interface does the wrpper provide to the core driver? I can't say that I've looked at the nVidia wrappers, but I expect that Linus has, and he specifically stated that he thinks that nVidia can honestly say that the ported code had no Linux orgin. If Linus is willing to accept that the wrappers provide an API to the binary drivers that they were already written to, I'm willing to accept his word for it.
While you seem to be chastising Linus for getting "tied up arguing about derived works", that's what this is all about. For the sake of argument, let's assume that binary portion of the nVidia driver was written for Windows, and the wrapper maps some Windows calls to Linux calls. Is the wrapper a derived work of Linux? Yes, since it's not usable without Linux. Is the binary driver a derived work of Linux? Linus is saying no, because it was written to a different interface, and required a translation layer to work on Linux. The argument that the binary driver is a derived work of Linux because the wrapper makes it work on Linux is akin to the SCO argument that anything that ever touched SysV code became part of SysV.
The fact that Linus states that there is no exception must worry a lot of companies out there who are producing binary drivers for Linux
No, because he immediately explains that it isn't an exception, it's a clarification:
There's a clarification that user-space programs that use the standard system call interfaces aren't considered derived works, but even that isn't an "exception" - it's just a statement of a border of what is clearly considered a "derived work". User programs are _clearly_ not derived works of the kernel, and as such whatever the kernel license is just doesn't matter.
And in fact, when it comes to modules, the GPL issue is exactly the same. The kernel _is_ GPL. No ifs, buts and maybe's about it. As a result, anything that is a derived work has to be GPL'd. It's that simple.
Now, the "derived work" issue in copyright law is the only thing that leads to any gray areas. There are areas that are not gray at all: user space is clearly not a derived work, while kernel patches clearly _are_ derived works.
But one gray area in particular is something like a driver that was originally written for another operating system (ie clearly not a derived work of Linux in origin). At exactly what point does it become a derived work of the kernel (and thus fall under the GPL)?
THAT is a gray area, and _that_ is the area where I personally believe that some modules may be considered to not be derived works simply because they weren't designed for Linux and don't depend on any special Linux behaviour.
And specifically talking about nVidia:
In contrast, these days it would be hard to argue that a new driver or filesystem was developed without any thought of Linux. I think the NVidia people can probably reasonably honestly say that the code they ported had _no_ Linux origin. But quite frankly, I'd be less inclined to believe that for some other projects out there.
And, to wrap it up:
No, the note at the top of the copying file is something totally different: it's basically a statement to the effect that the copyright holder recognizes that there are limits to a derived work, and spells out one such limit that he would never contest in court.
See? It's neither a license nor a contract, but it actually does have legal meaning: look up the legal meaning of "estoppel" (google "define:" is qutie good). Trust me, it's got _tons_ of legal precedent.
There have been issues with paper votes too. Mis-counts, "lost" ballots, and a growing demand to have election tallies faster.
True, but with paper ballots there's something to recount if there's an allegation of a mis-count. Electronic ballots can be "lost" as well, and speed should not come at the cost of accuracy.
One thing I question is why use touch screen voting? What is wrong with this solution? Votes are cast on a piece of paper, just take a marker and fill in the appropriate bubble. Only one machine is required per location. So you have a fast count, and can always verify the acuracy by counting the paper ballots. And it's cost efficient too.
A device like that can catch overvoting, but not undervoting due to a partially filled in bubble. I think an electronic voting device which printed a filled in bubble ballot would be the ideal. The device would be able to display the ballot in the language of the voter's choice (within reason), and ensure that only valid ballots were printed, reducing spoiled ballots. The printed ballot would still be human readable (in English and the selected alternate language), permitting the voter to verify their vote, and allowing for a manual recount if necessary. I would even go as far as to suggest that once the voter confirmed on the device that the printed ballot was correct, the initial tally could be electronic, with the paper ballots only used for recounts and cross-checking of the electronic tally.
You'd still have to trust the original input device, and the software on it. Frankly, even if that device was entirely Open Source, I still wouldn't trust it to provide an accurate electronic transmission of the data. It will take a lot to pursuade me that any system which does not produce a physical, human-readable ballot for counting will be secure.
Slashdot Mirror
There'a an easy way to deal with that - never enter personal information at a site reached by clicking on a link in an email. If you get a notice that you need to update some piece of data, go to the site using the means you would reach it normally, whether that be via a bookmark or typing it in manually.
In other words, you want the freedom to speak without allowing others the freedom to speak about what you said.
I have ways around that. But most websites which I register at don't display my email address to the public, so I'm primarily at risk from their mailing lists being stolen/sold. I've had that happen, but the problem is still limited to blocking the compromised email folder.
In Milwaukee, at least, they require that anything other than sneakers be removed. Even where it isn't required, it souldn't be more than a couple minutes shoeless to put them through anyways.
Check the voting on the original bill, not the conference report. Only 7 Democrats and 2 Republicans voted against the original bill, which contained the expansion of the FBI "inspection" powers. Items may have been added in the conference with the Senate that more Democrats found objectionable, but it wasn't the reduction in privacy.
If you're going to think about that, keep in mind that Wired got its facts wrong. According to the bill summary, the 264-163 vote (roll call 649) which was presented as having taken place in June actually took place on 20 Nov, and was to agree to the conference report. Likewise, the Senate voice vote in November was to agree to the conference report. The actual vote on the bill as sent to the Senate, on 27 Jun, was 410-9 (roll call 333). Contrary to thier claims of opposing the legislation, both Rep. Betty McCollum and Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter voted for the bill in June, where section 334 of the bill is essentially identical to section 374 of the conference report. The Senate passed its version of the bill by unanimous consent on 31 Jul, also containing an essentially identical section 354. This was not a provision "slipped into the Intelligence Act at the 11th hour". Rather, it's a provision that politicians are now experiencing "buyer's remorse" over.
It's 'unsolicited bulk email'. Spam is spam, irregardless of the content.
The same thing happens in proprietary software. Perhaps there's a lower rate of attrition in proptietary software once it's past the proposal stage, but I think that has a lot to do with the argument "We've already spent $bigbucks on the BlackHole project, do you want that to go to waste?", while with open source, if a project doesn't actually meet a need, the project is most likely going to wither away.
While you seem to be chastising Linus for getting "tied up arguing about derived works", that's what this is all about. For the sake of argument, let's assume that binary portion of the nVidia driver was written for Windows, and the wrapper maps some Windows calls to Linux calls. Is the wrapper a derived work of Linux? Yes, since it's not usable without Linux. Is the binary driver a derived work of Linux? Linus is saying no, because it was written to a different interface, and required a translation layer to work on Linux. The argument that the binary driver is a derived work of Linux because the wrapper makes it work on Linux is akin to the SCO argument that anything that ever touched SysV code became part of SysV.
You'd still have to trust the original input device, and the software on it. Frankly, even if that device was entirely Open Source, I still wouldn't trust it to provide an accurate electronic transmission of the data. It will take a lot to pursuade me that any system which does not produce a physical, human-readable ballot for counting will be secure.