We're approaching the third anniversity of the Columbine shootings. Right after they occured NBC aired the epic made-for-TV movie "Atomic Train" everywhere in the country except the Denver market.
It seems they were afraid that we would have such febble minds we couldn't distinguish between the reality of Columbine and a fictional account of a nuclear explosion near town.
My mother taped it for me, and I passed it around to my friends. I find it hard to imagine anyone taking the story seriously, and if you have any real technical knowledge the story was absolutely incomprehensible.
Hollywood movies can get it right, but it's extremely rare. For every Terminator 2 or True Lies, you have a hundred Armaggedons(sp).
That argument is libertarian bullshit that's totally ignorant of history.
The record industry has historically abused its monopoly power at every chance it had. It's happening today, it happened when radio stations first became common, and it happened when phonographs where first introduced. (Did you know that early phonographs could only be legally played on some phonograph players (those who paid the bribes to the copyright holders), and the records could never be loaned, sold, etc.)
The abuse was so bad that Congress made an exemption for phonographic copyrights, and phonographi copyrights alone. ANYONE can produce and sell a compilation CD of ANYTHING, and the copyright owner can't do anything to stop it as long as the compilation producer pays a modest compulsary licensing fee set by statute. Likewise radio stations and other commercial users can pay a compulsary licensing fee and tell the RIAA representative to get lost when they try to force the station to pay more, or change the presentation, or whatever.
On the one hand I'm surprised that the RIAA is trying this same shit once again. The public may not be aware of its sordid history, but the industry lawyers and regulators certainly are and there is absolutely no chance that compulsary licensing will be enacted for webcasts. The only question is the amount charged... and this proposal is *way* too high, and the burden to documenting individual users is far too high. In particular I remember that small college radio station example - the numbers were so high that I think it would be cheaper for the station to pay the compulsary licensing fee and distribute free CDs containing their entire playlist to every student than it would be to operate the webcast for a few weeks!
On the other hand, there's a libertarian born every second. Libertarian principles aren't bad, but most libertarians have a big blind spot when it comes to the fact that there are some "bad players" who have a CENTURY (or more) of demonstrated history abusing the rights of others whenever they have half a chance. Only the government is able to stop this abuse - individuals and smaller companies simply don't have the resources to fight them.
Or perhaps a bit more to the point, he could set up authentication for his friends. That's like making duplicate keys for your friends (where you are authorized to do so - not a "janitor" situation) while still keeping strangers out.
This won't give 100% accessibility, but it's a reasonable compromise. If he wants 100% accessibility, he should set up a web mail server interface, again with some form of authentication.
"Preferred" is well-defined here
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Abusing the GPL?
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You may be a lawyer, but you don't know squat about development.
The "preferred" source is *always* the highest-level code in a compilation sequence. This source, and this source alone, will maintain iterations across compilation cycles. On an idiot or an incompetent fool would attempt to modify any derived files unless there was absolutely no other alternative, e.g., ancient mainframe programs where the source code has been lost.
In this case, the company is proposing releasing COMPILED code, not source code. Don't be confused by the common usage of "compiler," technically a "compiler" is any program that takes text and rewrites it in a mechanicalistic manner into a second text. That includes conventional compilers, YACC and LEX parsers, ESQL/C preprocessors (such as Pro*C and ecpg), RPCGEN, gperf and code obscuration tools.
The fact that the compiled output can be run through a C compiler is irrelevant. The output of yacc, lex, gperf, rpcgen and Pro*C can also be run through a C compiler, but nobody who uses those tools would ever consider these derived files the "source." They processed files are distributed solely so that third parties without those tools installed can make changes to other files and compile the system as a whole.
Or it means that the ACPI is always OFF. From the context, it sounds like the BIOS disables ACPI and "protects the user" from accidently enabling it and having a less-than-ideal XP experience.
Even if the user knows damn well what they're doing and they're using an OS that supports ACPI on that motherboard. Because, you know, nobody ever runs anything other than Windows.
His position only makes sense if MS management is so weak that they haven't been able to force their programmers to document their internal interfaces and file formats... in which case they should thank the courts for coming in and making those bastards document their work since they're blowing off billg and Balmer.
Yeah, right.
I'm sorry, but this is should be a non-brainer. Every major API and every file format should already be documented - or the person in charge of that group should be fired on the spot for incompetency and his/her replacement's first task will be getting that documentation in place. The same managers should also have in place a review and approval process for changes in that API.
Bottom line - either Balmer can produce the requested documentation by releasing internal documentation, or he's incompetent. Or he's taking his lead from the Enron leadership and deliberately lying because he figures that jail time for perjury and contempt doesn't apply to the likes of him.
(Of course, I'm sure that the internal documentation includes hundreds of unpublished calls that they've denied exist. Tough shit - they made their bed and it's time they lie in it.)
So what? Why should any community that negotiated a contract in good faith give a flying fsck about the cable company's business concerns?
The bottom line is that the company got something valuable (the cable TV franchise) in exchange for promises. If it can't honor that agreement due to some unforeseeable event, and massive debt to honor all promises is *not* unforeseeable, then the contract should have escape clauses. These clauses may include fines, mandatory price reductions (both designed to change the economics of the situation to make it cheaper to comply with the contract than to breach it), or even early termination of the franchise agreement to replace the non-performer with another company.
If the company negotiated in bad faith (knowing that it never intended to honor the terms of the agreement), then that's a breach that warrants immediate termination of the contract.
If the company was honest and admitted that it couldn't provide service for N years, then it might lose the franchise.... and would probably get it back when the other company defaulted if they made impossible claims. Or it might prompt the community to identify alternative solutions to the problem.
... or is this yet another example of the New Feudalism where individuals are held to contracts even if they never agreed to them (AOL purchases recently discussed), while companies get a walk?
If Congress can make no such law, the courts will not enforce such laws.
Rights can't be signed away. That's part of their definition. Therefore contracts can't place any restriction on a person's speech either.
Therefore you can't have NDAs, even when legitimate. You can't have trade secrets, even when legitimate. You can't have out-of-court settlements with a confidentiality clause.
Taken to an extreme, you can't even assert doctor-patient or lawyer-client privilege. If your doctor wants to make you the butt of a joke he can.
Maybe you're comfortable with this, but this is *far* from where the law is today.
This will have a huge effect in the long run, since crypto isn't just used for encryption. It's also used for authentication, and is critical in token-based authentication (e.g., smartcards). With tokens, you have strong authentication ("something you have" (token) and "something you know" (passphrase), lacking only "something you are" (e.g., fingerprint)).
This allows you to do some really nice things. You want temporary root access? Sure - put your card in the reader and type in your passphrase. Once you remove the card, root access goes away.
Or you need access to a database containing confidential information? Put in the your card and you gain access to database... but it will be dropped when you remove your card.
If this guy had the balls to stand up and say "this is political free speech, it's not spam, get over it!" a lot of spam fighters would give him a bit of room. We understand that there are no simple answers when dealing with politicians (and political issues in general) that are often excluded by a mass media that is focused on ratings, not public service.
But this idiot doesn't even know the first rule of politics - no matter what you did, you can make it far worse by trying to cover it up and failing. He spammed header information - he should burn in Hell for that regardless of the merits of the content of the message! I hope every person who got that spam writes a check for $5 or $10 for his opponent, telling the opponent exactly why they got that donation... with copies send to this moron and the local TV stations. Let him learn that forging headers means that's he's not fit to pick the dog shit up in the city parks, much less represent a district.
(Of course, if it turns out that the opponent forged the headers and got checks... suddenly that's fraud by misrepresentation. Criminal indictments tend to put a stop to that *very* fast.)
States don't have the right to regulate interstate commerce, but they most definitely do have the right to regulate intrastate commerce. Each state can assert its own requirements on software sold within its jurisdiction. This is common practice in other fields (e.g., insurance), and while it's not common in consumer products it's not unheard of. Odds are that the gas grill you buy is in LA is not the same as the ones you'll find in other parts of the country.
It's fully within the power of these states to pass their own legislation that applies to all software sold within their borders, e.g., all software must fully document all APIs and file formats or the consumer is entitled to the greater of $10k or 3x purchase price statutory damages for each purchase. Each vendor will have to decide whether they want to pull out of that market or comply with the new law. Many companies would pull out of a single state, but NINE states (including several large ones) is another matter.
Bottom line: the issue isn't whether these states are going to get their own settlement, the only issue is if Microsoft will agree to it in these settlement talks or if the software market will be Balkanized because the states feel that the DOJ and federal courts are nothing but Bill's love bitch and they have no alternative to local laws.
Actually, if you can find the right lever you can do a lot.
Denver was operating its photo radar in a way purely designed to rip off drivers. Sure the traffic speed on I-70 is above the posted limit, but you don't "fix" that by putting photo radar units on the on-ramps where the interstates merge! Ditto some local streets where the speed limit may be 30, but the heavy traffic always goes 40-45.
So lawyers found an irregularity in the ways their tickets were handled, so they contested their tickets and won. IIRC the problem they found was that Denver contracted out too much of the process to a third party, something explicitly prohibited by the enabling legislation because of fears that it would become a cash cow instead of a legitimate safety tool.
After the first TV news reports, there was talk of a class-action suit. Denver just announced it will use PR in the way intended by the enabling legislation (e.g., in school zones), and has tossed out all unpaid tickets.
There's even some talk that the city may be required to refund all previously paid PR tickets. In this case, I would not mind seeing those lawyers collect my refunds if it puts a permanent end to the hypocritical PR program. As I said, I don't mind PR near schools or other areas where kids are likely to run into the street without warning, but keep them off the interstate and major roads.
So you can fight these nuisance tickets and win big, but you have to have the right tools.
Microsoft's feeble argument is that the judge can't do anything other than accept or reject the proposed settlement as a whole - a lot like "Fast Track" treaty negotiations. Even the strictest "original intent"er gives judges more power than that!
This claim doesn't make sense until you learn that MS has also asked the court to dismiss the suits by the non-settling states because the states don't have the constitutional authority to demand settlements that will affect the country as a whole.
So what they're trying to do, big surprise, is tell the dissenting states that THEY WILL sign onto to the Federal settlement, or they will be left out in the cold. At the same time, they've tossed a carrot to the states in the form of a modified settlement that addresses some of the most common concerns raised by the public comments.
Re:I guess that kid hit puberty early...
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iWarez
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That seems to be a dead web site. It loads, but the links all take you to other sites (e.g., the company that made this page, a PC Magazine article), but there's no way to learn more information about the product, order one, etc.
Maybe it works under MSIE, but to me this page is has flashing big red text saying that the product doesn't work under Linux and you'll have absolutely no support if you're foolish enough to buy one.
Most people seem to be missing two important distinctions here. You pay for commercial software, but not for free software.
This totally changes the nature of the beast. As a specific, non-tech example, I can give a friend a ride. I can even graciously accept gas money, or a free lunch for my troubles. I could even be a good Samaritan and offer a lift to total strangers.
But the instant I actively charge people for this, even if it's a token amount, I become a "for hire" limosine service and am required to obey a large number of laws. Some are "on point," others seem to exist solely to eliminate competition.
There are other, more subtle differences. I can refuse to give a friend a lift without explanation. Once I become "for hire" I can't (legally) refuse to accept a passenger without a good reason. E.g., someone showing a weapon can be refused, but someone who stinks because they haven't bathed in weeks can't be refused.
An even more extreme example is the difference between my friend asking me if I've ever experienced certain medical symptoms and a stranger paying me for advice. The former is a casual conversation between friends (or not so casual, if it involves a possible STD:-), the latter is practicing medicine without a license.
In the software realm, I would expect to see a similiar difference in the treatment of amateur efforts (where people develop software for the love of the craft) and commercial efforts. If someone is grossly negligent, it won't matter whether they're compensated or not. But for routine oversights, I would expect to see far more severe penalties for commercial vendors than OSS providers.
The second difference is that when you get software from Microsoft, you can't change it. Any errors *have* to be due to Microsoft's (in)action. In contrast, free software is released in source form and patches are routinely assigned. It's not morally acceptable to hold people accountable for the (mis)actions of others, so it's much harder to justify penalties against parties that provide source code.
In my opinion, I'm surprised the police haven't arrested you for fscking your dead mother yet.
Of course you can be sued, successfully, for your opinion if that opinion constitutes slander or libel. My comments aren't because I have no idea who you are (and no reasonable person would give my pseudonymous comments any weight), but that's not the case if you're listed as a reference for somebody.
This is common sense, but references are one area where people are unusually sensitive. What you see as being light-hearted banter might be perceived as actionable if the person loses a "sure thing" job. Think twice, then think again.
This is nonsense. The steam engine is a classic example of a major technology advance made by people being practical, not people doing theoretical research. The Romans could have developed steam locamotives, but they never got past an open steam engine which is little more than a toy.
As for the "collapse" of the Roman Empire, that's Western conceit. For various reasons the core of the RE moved from Rome to Constantinople/Istanbul (think of the relative importance of New York and Los Angeles in 1900 and 2000 - now multiply that a thousandfold since the US doesn't have an emperor) and the RE made an economic decision to reduce troop strength in the western provinces. At the same time, it was extremely difficult to see any difference between the "Romans" and the "barbarians" in the border areas. By the time Rome was sacked, IIRC the Western and Eastern Roman Empires were essentially separate entities.
The Eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire, which lasted until the 15th Century, and some people see a continuous track until the 19th Century.
The Western Roman Empire "collapsed," but it would have made little difference to most people living at the time. I have some friends who argue that the subsequent dark ages were due to the spread of Christianity and its hostility to pagan ideas (including all of the culture of Greece and Rome), not the collapse of the WRE.
Closing the loop, Europe escaped the dark ages after some people were accepted at Islamic universities (in Spain, IIRC). By this time, the Byzantine Empire/Eastern Roman Empire would have converted from Christianity to Islam.
Have you ever tried to set up a non-profit organization? Or justified the budget at one?
IANATA (I am not a tax attorney), but this line should probably be treated the same as any home office or business use of the personal car. For the home office you have to measure square footage (and prove exclusive use as an office), for the car you have to maintain mileage logs.
So you should track the network traffic and characterize it as either personal or business....
Except this isn't quite right. You can turn off a dialup account, but you can't turn off a DSL connection where people can hit your site at any time. There needs to be some way of accounting for availability.
Because of these secondary factors, you could probably get away with deducting the difference between your business DSL account and a cheap local dialup account. Then if you're challenged, you can at least demonstrate a reasonable effort to account for personal use of the business resource. But if you try to claim the entire expense, you may have the entire deduction denied and have penalities assessed.
Some of those suits against gun manufacturers are being misrepresented by the media. Big surprise.
E.g., there's one rifle model where there have been multiple reports of one model of gun discharging even though the safety was on. IIRC some people said that they didn't even have their finger near the trigger. This is why gun safety rules stress that you should never aim it at anything you don't intend to shoot - safeties fail, unloaded guns aren't, etc. But for whatever reason several people were killed or injured by this model of gun.
When the initial complaints arrived, the manufacturer claimed that the person was obviously mistaken. But people started suing, and the number of suits indicate that there's a real problem.
This is nothing but a "product safety" suit - if the safety is on, the gun should not fire. (On my Beretta, the safety physically rotates the firing pin by about 45 degrees.) But the media and some activists have had a field day with the suits. "What does 'product safety' mean with a tool designed to kill people?" (Same as everywhere else - it injures people when it works when it's not supposed to or fails to work when it should.) "Gun manufacturer sued because of deaths" (Disregarding the circumstances of these deaths.)
In some places it's actually required. E.g., everyone knows about the Swiss, but a friend once commented on the paradox of Canada requiring private aircraft carry long guns (at least when flying over British Columbia and the Yukon - wild territories where a gun is essential survival gear if you go down) while simultaneously refusing to let Americans carry their guns across the border. What's an American pilot flying to Alaska supposed to do?
Guns are also pretty much required once you get into the American or Australian outback. Some people live in areas with large and occasionally vicious animals (e.g., grizzlies), and police hours away at the best of times.
As for the impact of guns on violence - guns don't help big guys like me kill people. I can still defend myself with my fists, or with my hunting knife, or with a knife from my kitchen.
But guns allow my 70 yo mother to have a chance against an attacker. The "equalizer" was called that for a reason.
I've seen a lot of comments about how this means that all SSL and PGP encryption is transparent, etc.
Please, get a grip.
Most "transient" connections still use 512 bit keys. If this effectively reduces the key size by 3, that's still 170 bits. That's far larger than the RSA key that took years to crack a few years back.
Technology improves, algorithms improve, and the TLAs can certainly afford to build cracking engines, but it will probably still take a substantial amount of time to crack a key. (Substantial = days.) Well worth the effort if you're looking at suspected terrorists or double agents inside of the FBI, but hardly worth it for anyone reading this comment.
What we *do* need to worry about is the effect on long-term keys. E.g., root CA keys often have 20-year lifetimes, something that now seems foolish with 1k bit keys.
You do NOT "opt in" to getting continuing mail when you make a purchase.
In meatspace, this is why I usually pay cash and never return warranty cards.
But on the net (and on the phone) your only option is paying by credit cards, and I've so fscking tired of getting spam for YEARS because I once purchased a christmas gift that I'm actually cutting back on my online purchases because of it.
If I make a purchase, you can get away with ONE follow-up catalog. But that's it - I don't want to be on your mailing lists, I don't want to be shared with your affiliates. You can get away with an opt-out box, but only if it's well-placed and visible - no 4-pt fonts buried on a page two links away from where I provide my information.
A point everyone seems to be overlooking is that this article is referring to next generation DVDs, not broadcast HDTV. The latter must be broadcast "in the clear," but the MPAA has been only been willing to release relatively low-resolution formats.
At the current rate of HDTV adoption, there is no chance of the FCC agreeing to allow encrypted broadcasts - one of the FCCs rules is to promote the use of the airwaves, and nothing stops that quicker than calling the early adopters who invested thousands of dollars "suckers."
Being unable to view high-res DVD-NGs on older HDTVs sucks, but it's not as bad as the broadcast getting encrypted.
What is with this British fascination with putting GPS systems into cars?
A while back comp.risks had an submission about a British proposal to use GPS systems in cars to enforce speed limits. There were the predictable criticisms of the plan - sometimes you need to exceed the speed limit, sometimes weather conditions make the speed limit unsafe, what about limited access roads with minimum speed limits and adjacent access roads? Plus the usual privacy concerns with the government knowing where you are - and more importantly where you routinely stop.
Now it's being proposed as a tool to smear out peak traffic loads. Because the Brits are too damn dumb to figure out for themselves that if they could shift their work hours by an hour or so then they could avoid a lot of aggrevations. (Not that Americans are any brighter, but at least I've seen ads aired for years encouraging employers to provide flexible hours.)
To me, this looks like there's someone in the government who really wants to get GPS systems in to every car and they're just trying different rationalizations until they find one the public will accept.
I've never seen a luggage cart accept less than a few bucks. They also keep 25 or 50 cents or so.
The point is that there needs to be economic value in doing this. Micropayments haven't taken off because it's not worth the effort to track down individuals for payments of a few cents.
To make this system work, you would need some way to identify and charge the original sender (ISP or self-hosting company or individual), and you would charge something like $0.25 per message. The ack might refund $0.20, to provide a small fee to cover operating the system.
Even if someone sent a 100 messages every day, that's only a few bucks in access fees. But the spammer who sends 100k messages in a single month would get hit hard.
Of course, there's also the problem of mailing lists, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
We're approaching the third anniversity of the Columbine shootings. Right after they occured NBC aired the epic made-for-TV movie "Atomic Train" everywhere in the country except the Denver market.
It seems they were afraid that we would have such febble minds we couldn't distinguish between the reality of Columbine and a fictional account of a nuclear explosion near town.
My mother taped it for me, and I passed it around to my friends. I find it hard to imagine anyone taking the story seriously, and if you have any real technical knowledge the story was absolutely incomprehensible.
Hollywood movies can get it right, but it's extremely rare. For every Terminator 2 or True Lies, you have a hundred Armaggedons(sp).
That argument is libertarian bullshit that's totally ignorant of history.
The record industry has historically abused its monopoly power at every chance it had. It's happening today, it happened when radio stations first became common, and it happened when phonographs where first introduced. (Did you know that early phonographs could only be legally played on some phonograph players (those who paid the bribes to the copyright holders), and the records could never be loaned, sold, etc.)
The abuse was so bad that Congress made an exemption for phonographic copyrights, and phonographi copyrights alone. ANYONE can produce and sell a compilation CD of ANYTHING, and the copyright owner can't do anything to stop it as long as the compilation producer pays a modest compulsary licensing fee set by statute. Likewise radio stations and other commercial users can pay a compulsary licensing fee and tell the RIAA representative to get lost when they try to force the station to pay more, or change the presentation, or whatever.
On the one hand I'm surprised that the RIAA is trying this same shit once again. The public may not be aware of its sordid history, but the industry lawyers and regulators certainly are and there is absolutely no chance that compulsary licensing will be enacted for webcasts. The only question is the amount charged... and this proposal is *way* too high, and the burden to documenting individual users is far too high. In particular I remember that small college radio station example - the numbers were so high that I think it would be cheaper for the station to pay the compulsary licensing fee and distribute free CDs containing their entire playlist to every student than it would be to operate the webcast for a few weeks!
On the other hand, there's a libertarian born every second. Libertarian principles aren't bad, but most libertarians have a big blind spot when it comes to the fact that there are some "bad players" who have a CENTURY (or more) of demonstrated history abusing the rights of others whenever they have half a chance. Only the government is able to stop this abuse - individuals and smaller companies simply don't have the resources to fight them.
Or perhaps a bit more to the point, he could set up authentication for his friends. That's like making duplicate keys for your friends (where you are authorized to do so - not a "janitor" situation) while still keeping strangers out.
This won't give 100% accessibility, but it's a reasonable compromise. If he wants 100% accessibility, he should set up a web mail server interface, again with some form of authentication.
You may be a lawyer, but you don't know squat about development.
The "preferred" source is *always* the highest-level code in a compilation sequence. This source, and this source alone, will maintain iterations across compilation cycles. On an idiot or an incompetent fool would attempt to modify any derived files unless there was absolutely no other alternative, e.g., ancient mainframe programs where the source code has been lost.
In this case, the company is proposing releasing COMPILED code, not source code. Don't be confused by the common usage of "compiler," technically a "compiler" is any program that takes text and rewrites it in a mechanicalistic manner into a second text. That includes conventional compilers, YACC and LEX parsers, ESQL/C preprocessors (such as Pro*C and ecpg), RPCGEN, gperf and code obscuration tools.
The fact that the compiled output can be run through a C compiler is irrelevant. The output of yacc, lex, gperf, rpcgen and Pro*C can also be run through a C compiler, but nobody who uses those tools would ever consider these derived files the "source." They processed files are distributed solely so that third parties without those tools installed can make changes to other files and compile the system as a whole.
Or it means that the ACPI is always OFF. From the context, it sounds like the BIOS disables ACPI and "protects the user" from accidently enabling it and having a less-than-ideal XP experience.
Even if the user knows damn well what they're doing and they're using an OS that supports ACPI on that motherboard. Because, you know, nobody ever runs anything other than Windows.
His position only makes sense if MS management is so weak that they haven't been able to force their programmers to document their internal interfaces and file formats... in which case they should thank the courts for coming in and making those bastards document their work since they're blowing off billg and Balmer.
Yeah, right.
I'm sorry, but this is should be a non-brainer. Every major API and every file format should already be documented - or the person in charge of that group should be fired on the spot for incompetency and his/her replacement's first task will be getting that documentation in place. The same managers should also have in place a review and approval process for changes in that API.
Bottom line - either Balmer can produce the requested documentation by releasing internal documentation, or he's incompetent. Or he's taking his lead from the Enron leadership and deliberately lying because he figures that jail time for perjury and contempt doesn't apply to the likes of him.
(Of course, I'm sure that the internal documentation includes hundreds of unpublished calls that they've denied exist. Tough shit - they made their bed and it's time they lie in it.)
So what? Why should any community that negotiated a contract in good faith give a flying fsck about the cable company's business concerns?
The bottom line is that the company got something valuable (the cable TV franchise) in exchange for promises. If it can't honor that agreement due to some unforeseeable event, and massive debt to honor all promises is *not* unforeseeable, then the contract should have escape clauses. These clauses may include fines, mandatory price reductions (both designed to change the economics of the situation to make it cheaper to comply with the contract than to breach it), or even early termination of the franchise agreement to replace the non-performer with another company.
If the company negotiated in bad faith (knowing that it never intended to honor the terms of the agreement), then that's a breach that warrants immediate termination of the contract.
If the company was honest and admitted that it couldn't provide service for N years, then it might lose the franchise.... and would probably get it back when the other company defaulted if they made impossible claims. Or it might prompt the community to identify alternative solutions to the problem.
... or is this yet another example of the New Feudalism where individuals are held to contracts even if they never agreed to them (AOL purchases recently discussed), while companies get a walk?
Let's think this through....
If Congress can make no such law, the courts will not enforce such laws.
Rights can't be signed away. That's part of their definition. Therefore contracts can't place any restriction on a person's speech either.
Therefore you can't have NDAs, even when legitimate. You can't have trade secrets, even when legitimate. You can't have out-of-court settlements with a confidentiality clause.
Taken to an extreme, you can't even assert doctor-patient or lawyer-client privilege. If your doctor wants to make you the butt of a joke he can.
Maybe you're comfortable with this, but this is *far* from where the law is today.
This will have a huge effect in the long run, since crypto isn't just used for encryption. It's also used for authentication, and is critical in token-based authentication (e.g., smartcards). With tokens, you have strong authentication ("something you have" (token) and "something you know" (passphrase), lacking only "something you are" (e.g., fingerprint)).
This allows you to do some really nice things. You want temporary root access? Sure - put your card in the reader and type in your passphrase. Once you remove the card, root access goes away.
Or you need access to a database containing confidential information? Put in the your card and you gain access to database... but it will be dropped when you remove your card.
If this guy had the balls to stand up and say "this is political free speech, it's not spam, get over it!" a lot of spam fighters would give him a bit of room. We understand that there are no simple answers when dealing with politicians (and political issues in general) that are often excluded by a mass media that is focused on ratings, not public service.
But this idiot doesn't even know the first rule of politics - no matter what you did, you can make it far worse by trying to cover it up and failing. He spammed header information - he should burn in Hell for that regardless of the merits of the content of the message! I hope every person who got that spam writes a check for $5 or $10 for his opponent, telling the opponent exactly why they got that donation... with copies send to this moron and the local TV stations. Let him learn that forging headers means that's he's not fit to pick the dog shit up in the city parks, much less represent a district.
(Of course, if it turns out that the opponent forged the headers and got checks... suddenly that's fraud by misrepresentation. Criminal indictments tend to put a stop to that *very* fast.)
That's irrelevant.
States don't have the right to regulate interstate commerce, but they most definitely do have the right to regulate intrastate commerce. Each state can assert its own requirements on software sold within its jurisdiction. This is common practice in other fields (e.g., insurance), and while it's not common in consumer products it's not unheard of. Odds are that the gas grill you buy is in LA is not the same as the ones you'll find in other parts of the country.
It's fully within the power of these states to pass their own legislation that applies to all software sold within their borders, e.g., all software must fully document all APIs and file formats or the consumer is entitled to the greater of $10k or 3x purchase price statutory damages for each purchase. Each vendor will have to decide whether they want to pull out of that market or comply with the new law. Many companies would pull out of a single state, but NINE states (including several large ones) is another matter.
Bottom line: the issue isn't whether these states are going to get their own settlement, the only issue is if Microsoft will agree to it in these settlement talks or if the software market will be Balkanized because the states feel that the DOJ and federal courts are nothing but Bill's love bitch and they have no alternative to local laws.
Actually, if you can find the right lever you can do a lot.
Denver was operating its photo radar in a way purely designed to rip off drivers. Sure the traffic speed on I-70 is above the posted limit, but you don't "fix" that by putting photo radar units on the on-ramps where the interstates merge! Ditto some local streets where the speed limit may be 30, but the heavy traffic always goes 40-45.
So lawyers found an irregularity in the ways their tickets were handled, so they contested their tickets and won. IIRC the problem they found was that Denver contracted out too much of the process to a third party, something explicitly prohibited by the enabling legislation because of fears that it would become a cash cow instead of a legitimate safety tool.
After the first TV news reports, there was talk of a class-action suit. Denver just announced it will use PR in the way intended by the enabling legislation (e.g., in school zones), and has tossed out all unpaid tickets.
There's even some talk that the city may be required to refund all previously paid PR tickets. In this case, I would not mind seeing those lawyers collect my refunds if it puts a permanent end to the hypocritical PR program. As I said, I don't mind PR near schools or other areas where kids are likely to run into the street without warning, but keep them off the interstate and major roads.
So you can fight these nuisance tickets and win big, but you have to have the right tools.
Microsoft's feeble argument is that the judge can't do anything other than accept or reject the proposed settlement as a whole - a lot like "Fast Track" treaty negotiations. Even the strictest "original intent"er gives judges more power than that!
This claim doesn't make sense until you learn that MS has also asked the court to dismiss the suits by the non-settling states because the states don't have the constitutional authority to demand settlements that will affect the country as a whole.
So what they're trying to do, big surprise, is tell the dissenting states that THEY WILL sign onto to the Federal settlement, or they will be left out in the cold. At the same time, they've tossed a carrot to the states in the form of a modified settlement that addresses some of the most common concerns raised by the public comments.
That seems to be a dead web site. It loads, but the links all take you to other sites (e.g., the company that made this page, a PC Magazine article), but there's no way to learn more information about the product, order one, etc.
Maybe it works under MSIE, but to me this page is has flashing big red text saying that the product doesn't work under Linux and you'll have absolutely no support if you're foolish enough to buy one.
Most people seem to be missing two important distinctions here. You pay for commercial software, but not for free software.
:-), the latter is practicing medicine without a license.
This totally changes the nature of the beast. As a specific, non-tech example, I can give a friend a ride. I can even graciously accept gas money, or a free lunch for my troubles. I could even be a good Samaritan and offer a lift to total strangers.
But the instant I actively charge people for this, even if it's a token amount, I become a "for hire" limosine service and am required to obey a large number of laws. Some are "on point," others seem to exist solely to eliminate competition.
There are other, more subtle differences. I can refuse to give a friend a lift without explanation. Once I become "for hire" I can't (legally) refuse to accept a passenger without a good reason. E.g., someone showing a weapon can be refused, but someone who stinks because they haven't bathed in weeks can't be refused.
An even more extreme example is the difference between my friend asking me if I've ever experienced certain medical symptoms and a stranger paying me for advice. The former is a casual conversation between friends (or not so casual, if it involves a possible STD
In the software realm, I would expect to see a similiar difference in the treatment of amateur efforts (where people develop software for the love of the craft) and commercial efforts. If someone is grossly negligent, it won't matter whether they're compensated or not. But for routine oversights, I would expect to see far more severe penalties for commercial vendors than OSS providers.
The second difference is that when you get software from Microsoft, you can't change it. Any errors *have* to be due to Microsoft's (in)action. In contrast, free software is released in source form and patches are routinely assigned. It's not morally acceptable to hold people accountable for the (mis)actions of others, so it's much harder to justify penalties against parties that provide source code.
Of course you can be sued, successfully, for your opinion if that opinion constitutes slander or libel. My comments aren't because I have no idea who you are (and no reasonable person would give my pseudonymous comments any weight), but that's not the case if you're listed as a reference for somebody.
This is common sense, but references are one area where people are unusually sensitive. What you see as being light-hearted banter might be perceived as actionable if the person loses a "sure thing" job. Think twice, then think again.
This is nonsense. The steam engine is a classic example of a major technology advance made by people being practical, not people doing theoretical research. The Romans could have developed steam locamotives, but they never got past an open steam engine which is little more than a toy.
As for the "collapse" of the Roman Empire, that's Western conceit. For various reasons the core of the RE moved from Rome to Constantinople/Istanbul (think of the relative importance of New York and Los Angeles in 1900 and 2000 - now multiply that a thousandfold since the US doesn't have an emperor) and the RE made an economic decision to reduce troop strength in the western provinces. At the same time, it was extremely difficult to see any difference between the "Romans" and the "barbarians" in the border areas. By the time Rome was sacked, IIRC the Western and Eastern Roman Empires were essentially separate entities.
The Eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire, which lasted until the 15th Century, and some people see a continuous track until the 19th Century.
The Western Roman Empire "collapsed," but it would have made little difference to most people living at the time. I have some friends who argue that the subsequent dark ages were due to the spread of Christianity and its hostility to pagan ideas (including all of the culture of Greece and Rome), not the collapse of the WRE.
Closing the loop, Europe escaped the dark ages after some people were accepted at Islamic universities (in Spain, IIRC). By this time, the Byzantine Empire/Eastern Roman Empire would have converted from Christianity to Islam.
Have you ever tried to set up a non-profit organization? Or justified the budget at one?
IANATA (I am not a tax attorney), but this line should probably be treated the same as any home office or business use of the personal car. For the home office you have to measure square footage (and prove exclusive use as an office), for the car you have to maintain mileage logs.
So you should track the network traffic and characterize it as either personal or business....
Except this isn't quite right. You can turn off a dialup account, but you can't turn off a DSL connection where people can hit your site at any time. There needs to be some way of accounting for availability.
Because of these secondary factors, you could probably get away with deducting the difference between your business DSL account and a cheap local dialup account. Then if you're challenged, you can at least demonstrate a reasonable effort to account for personal use of the business resource. But if you try to claim the entire expense, you may have the entire deduction denied and have penalities assessed.
Some of those suits against gun manufacturers are being misrepresented by the media. Big surprise.
E.g., there's one rifle model where there have been multiple reports of one model of gun discharging even though the safety was on. IIRC some people said that they didn't even have their finger near the trigger. This is why gun safety rules stress that you should never aim it at anything you don't intend to shoot - safeties fail, unloaded guns aren't, etc. But for whatever reason several people were killed or injured by this model of gun.
When the initial complaints arrived, the manufacturer claimed that the person was obviously mistaken. But people started suing, and the number of suits indicate that there's a real problem.
This is nothing but a "product safety" suit - if the safety is on, the gun should not fire. (On my Beretta, the safety physically rotates the firing pin by about 45 degrees.) But the media and some activists have had a field day with the suits. "What does 'product safety' mean with a tool designed to kill people?" (Same as everywhere else - it injures people when it works when it's not supposed to or fails to work when it should.) "Gun manufacturer sued because of deaths" (Disregarding the circumstances of these deaths.)
In some places it's actually required. E.g., everyone knows about the Swiss, but a friend once commented on the paradox of Canada requiring private aircraft carry long guns (at least when flying over British Columbia and the Yukon - wild territories where a gun is essential survival gear if you go down) while simultaneously refusing to let Americans carry their guns across the border. What's an American pilot flying to Alaska supposed to do?
Guns are also pretty much required once you get into the American or Australian outback. Some people live in areas with large and occasionally vicious animals (e.g., grizzlies), and police hours away at the best of times.
As for the impact of guns on violence - guns don't help big guys like me kill people. I can still defend myself with my fists, or with my hunting knife, or with a knife from my kitchen.
But guns allow my 70 yo mother to have a chance against an attacker. The "equalizer" was called that for a reason.
I've seen a lot of comments about how this means that all SSL and PGP encryption is transparent, etc.
Please, get a grip.
Most "transient" connections still use 512 bit keys. If this effectively reduces the key size by 3, that's still 170 bits. That's far larger than the RSA key that took years to crack a few years back.
Technology improves, algorithms improve, and the TLAs can certainly afford to build cracking engines, but it will probably still take a substantial amount of time to crack a key. (Substantial = days.) Well worth the effort if you're looking at suspected terrorists or double agents inside of the FBI, but hardly worth it for anyone reading this comment.
What we *do* need to worry about is the effect on long-term keys. E.g., root CA keys often have 20-year lifetimes, something that now seems foolish with 1k bit keys.
You do NOT "opt in" to getting continuing mail when you make a purchase.
In meatspace, this is why I usually pay cash and never return warranty cards.
But on the net (and on the phone) your only option is paying by credit cards, and I've so fscking tired of getting spam for YEARS because I once purchased a christmas gift that I'm actually cutting back on my online purchases because of it.
If I make a purchase, you can get away with ONE follow-up catalog. But that's it - I don't want to be on your mailing lists, I don't want to be shared with your affiliates. You can get away with an opt-out box, but only if it's well-placed and visible - no 4-pt fonts buried on a page two links away from where I provide my information.
A point everyone seems to be overlooking is that this article is referring to next generation DVDs, not broadcast HDTV. The latter must be broadcast "in the clear," but the MPAA has been only been willing to release relatively low-resolution formats.
At the current rate of HDTV adoption, there is no chance of the FCC agreeing to allow encrypted broadcasts - one of the FCCs rules is to promote the use of the airwaves, and nothing stops that quicker than calling the early adopters who invested thousands of dollars "suckers."
Being unable to view high-res DVD-NGs on older HDTVs sucks, but it's not as bad as the broadcast getting encrypted.
A while back comp.risks had an submission about a British proposal to use GPS systems in cars to enforce speed limits. There were the predictable criticisms of the plan - sometimes you need to exceed the speed limit, sometimes weather conditions make the speed limit unsafe, what about limited access roads with minimum speed limits and adjacent access roads? Plus the usual privacy concerns with the government knowing where you are - and more importantly where you routinely stop.
Now it's being proposed as a tool to smear out peak traffic loads. Because the Brits are too damn dumb to figure out for themselves that if they could shift their work hours by an hour or so then they could avoid a lot of aggrevations. (Not that Americans are any brighter, but at least I've seen ads aired for years encouraging employers to provide flexible hours.)
To me, this looks like there's someone in the government who really wants to get GPS systems in to every car and they're just trying different rationalizations until they find one the public will accept.
I've never seen a luggage cart accept less than a few bucks. They also keep 25 or 50 cents or so.
The point is that there needs to be economic value in doing this. Micropayments haven't taken off because it's not worth the effort to track down individuals for payments of a few cents.
To make this system work, you would need some way to identify and charge the original sender (ISP or self-hosting company or individual), and you would charge something like $0.25 per message. The ack might refund $0.20, to provide a small fee to cover operating the system.
Even if someone sent a 100 messages every day, that's only a few bucks in access fees. But the spammer who sends 100k messages in a single month would get hit hard.
Of course, there's also the problem of mailing lists, etc.