I would really, really like to see someone enforce this ruling... I dont know how they can possibly do it... Does a cached copy count? What about all the usenet postings of it?
What exactly was the reasoning behind the judges ruling? Hell, what laws did he cite in making his decision
Does this mean that companies that make defective products cant be criticized? This is no outright censorship, and a violation of the first amendment rights of the US... come on people... there is no intellectual property here... just criticism...
time to start writing emails and letters,,methinks...
yeh... these things seem to come in waves... and the less credible and backed up by facts the statements are, the more outrageous and vague the claims are.
Like security - be careful... everyone could know how your OS works... if you're not careful, it may not be secure...
duh...
and as for forking... one company controlloing the entire OS has trouble not forking the SAME version...
I mean come on... NT 4.0... why is it that some stuf wil work with service pack X, but not with Service Pack X+1... or something equally annoying... It seems that MS cant even keep a tree clean and that one product for them can branch....
well... i think that you'vew been shipping libjpeg.62, and the newest is libjpeg.62b... i dunno the exact specs, but the problem is that it is missing the libjpeg.so.62 module that is needed by just about everything...
and if you upgrade to the latest, then KDE and A ton of other apps get real cranky...
MS has already backed off controlling this standard. THey have given control of it over to teh SIIA. THere was some thought that it would be less well received if MS were seen as the controller of it...
its just meant to inter-connect them, and make them play nicely with each other...
basically, it takes the Student information app (demographics, grades, schedules) and allows it to interface nicely with the food cafeteria apps and the busing apps...
it also allows for easier state/federal reporting... which may/may not be a good thing depending on your view.
The ZIS bit could very well run on linux, and would be a good thing, if it were... the spec tends to favor an MS implementation because of its recommendation to use a multiple queueing mechanism to persist the messages that need to be passed...
Oh yeh - if you go and get teh MS source code for the ZIS - could you email me if you can actually get it to compile... because i cant:-(
this is an important victory for free speech... Not a defeat of an anti-spamming law...
If a group like planned parent hood, the NRA, the KKK or whatever sends out a message to a large group of people unsolicited, couldnt this be considered spam?
the anti-spam law made it possible to threaten legal action against all of these groups in the guise of "stopping spam"...
Next it will be "for the children"
"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it"
I completely agree with you licensing a series of sounds in a particular order and style (from henceforth called a "song") should not be protected in the manner that it is.
However, if this "song" is arranged, produced, and recorded by a company (lets call this a "track"), then the company is the only entity that should be able to make money from distributing this particular "track".
Meaning this - the "song" isnt protected, but whoever's interpretation of it is.
THis could be considered quite a lot like alogorithms vs. implementations in software.
The algorithm is just an idea (if i do this in this manner, I will produce something). But the implementation is actually taking the idea and doing something with it...
For example... I have an idea of making somethng that allows you to easily edit, format and publish printed works... I'll call it a "WordProcessor". Not a big deal, right... Just an idea..
Now if I implement this idea into lets say "SlashWord", then I can protect my implementation of it. But if someone makes another implementation, like "FreshWord", and it competes with me, they are allowed to do that, and the better implementation wins.
But I cant protect the "idea" of a wordprocessor... Only the implementation...
what really puzzles me about this whole thing, is that these companies want US to patronize them?
seriously... they treat all of their customers like criminals. They lie, cheat, spread propaganda and attack their customers... And worst of all, they force stuff like the backstreet boys and brittney spears on us...
And yet, the very people that they are attacking are supposed to patronize these fascist dictators of america.
Seriously - if someone described a country where control of the government is centralized into the hands of a few (big corporations), the artwork was controlled by the same few i.e. movies, books, music.
And the NEWS was controlled byt these same groups...
We would call it a fascist/communistic country...
and that folks, is where we are at.
Re:ethics and programming...
on
Database Nation
·
· Score: 1
well that was blunt and to the point...
i guess that either i have ethics and do something about them, or I just say I have them and use excuses... hmmm...
maybe there needs to be a "computer ethics" standardization... kindof like the medical ethics that defines what is ethical/unethcical and when programmers cross outside of the line, they get uncertified...
one of the hard things here is personal morality in projects. I'm currently involved in a project that could very well be used to track students throughout their primary educational careers. Nationally.
Problem is, its a fun, challenging exciting project, but the ethical questions are still plaguing me.
The problem comes down to economics... if i want to eat, i have to code... but certain projects may go against personal standards...
you can sell your original copy of it for a profit, or for a loss for that matter, it doesnt matter. Copyright law has traditionaly been clear that you may not reproduce and sell work, but sell the original is fine.
Of course, the riaa/mpaa/software industry would LOVE to get rid of this little bit, so they can sell more originals...
They arent too happy with it because they dont get any more money after the original purchase. I still dont understand how Congress can pass these laws and feel good about themselcves...
in history, there is a pattern that can be seen when a new advance in technology/philosophy comes out and is in prominence, it ends up changing the ruling caste structure.
And every time, there some type of a "struggle" or fight to ouster the old powers that be.
People in control, do not like to lose control.
In the industrial revolution, a new group of people came into power. Thus, the industrial revolution. Of course, during this, there were many fights over workers rights, and eventually, the "good guys" (the workers) pretty much won.
Look at the printing press - that revolutionized mass dissemination of information, too.
Today, the old media pretty much ru(i)ns this country. The art (and therefore the culture) is controled through a ridiculously high barrier to entry (high cost) of mass producing media. Under the old system, if you made a song/movie/book, the only way to mass distribute it was through the various large record companies/movie studios/publishing houses.
TOday, you can reach millions with very very little marginal cost.
That scares teh hell out of the mass media outlets. They've lost control, and are now trying to regain control by erecting artificial barriers.
All of this isnt about stopping pirating of content, its about stopping creation of "un-official" artwork.
We're at a very exciting time in this world, but dont expect the next couple of years to be easy... The old media will not be replaced without a fight.
maybe MS will test the UCITA and not allow reverse-engineering of this "proprietary" tradesecret that they obviously enhanced...
I get the distinct impression that the word "interoperability" has a different definition for MS... basically: "All of MS's products work with MS products... how much more do you want?
While it is perfectly legal for me to walk around with a baseball bat, even swinging it around wildly... But it becomes illegal at your nose...
Oh yeh - at this point the baseball bat would become "a deadly weapon"
So posession of these programs is not illegal, but using them to harm someone else's property is... and then they become "weapons".
As long as we only prosecute people for actions and not thoughts, we're fine...
of course... with "hate crime" legislation and profiling people to community forced anti-psychotic medication (really... its happening in california) we may have moved far away from this principle...
hopefully we can fix this system and not have to scrap it...
look at it this way: If I want to, I can wildly swing my arms about with clenched fists. I have a right to control what I do.
However, the right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose. You have a right to expect that I wont attack you.
If my excersize of my rights interferes with yours, we have a problem.
YOU have every right in the world to choose what you see, look at read, do. You can even try to control what your children do. Good Luck though... Control never works... Education does...
But if you try to restrict EVERYONE to something, you are violating their right to choose. It is about freedom of speech, expression, press... You name it, "Internet Filtering" violates it. BTW, lets be real, its not filtering, its censoring...
You see, the constitution PROTECTS our rights from these kinds of attacks. It doesnt "GIVE" them to us like some people would think, thinking that they were being kind to "give" us these rights.
The forefathers knew mob mentality, and that given enough time, people will vote away all of their rights.
THe supreme court has ruled on this in the CDA decision stating that the internet deserves the strongest 1st amendment protections, and also compared banning sites to burning books...
And you wouldnt advocate burning books, now would you?
making a game by yourself isnt that insane of a task... Most of the incredibly good, older classic games were designed and implemented by very few, sometimes just one, people.
IMHO, I think that since the game market has been turned into a corporate cash cow, the quality, in depth-ness and "experience" have all declined.
Yes, the audio-visual experience is more impressive, but the content is horrible... I cant remember the last new game that I coule get so involved in the characters and storylines that I fogot about the "real" world.
I mean, the classics - wasteland, bard's tale, Ultima III, IV, V were total immersion experiences.
Sigh... I long for the "good ole days" of games that made you use your brain instead of reflexes...
I also long fo rthe day when dying in an RPG was a really horrible thing...
Slashdot Mirror
I would really, really like to see someone enforce this ruling ... I dont know how they can possibly do it... Does a cached copy count? What about all the usenet postings of it?
,methinks...
What exactly was the reasoning behind the judges ruling? Hell, what laws did he cite in making his decision
Does this mean that companies that make defective products cant be criticized? This is no outright censorship, and a violation of the first amendment rights of the US... come on people... there is no intellectual property here... just criticism...
time to start writing emails and letters,
yeh... these things seem to come in waves... and the less credible and backed up by facts the statements are, the more outrageous and vague the claims are.
Like security - be careful... everyone could know how your OS works... if you're not careful, it may not be secure...
duh...
and as for forking... one company controlloing the entire OS has trouble not forking the SAME version...
I mean come on... NT 4.0... why is it that some stuf wil work with service pack X, but not with Service Pack X+1... or something equally annoying... It seems that MS cant even keep a tree clean and that one product for them can branch....
which is why theres a move away from it... the SIF specification makes it fairly easy to extend the definitions, without affecting everyone's app...
but yes, it is an attempt at EDI.
well... i think that you'vew been shipping libjpeg.62, and the newest is libjpeg.62b... i dunno the exact specs, but the problem is that it is missing the libjpeg.so.62 module that is needed by just about everything...
and if you upgrade to the latest, then KDE and A ton of other apps get real cranky...
MS has already backed off controlling this standard. THey have given control of it over to teh SIIA. THere was some thought that it would be less well received if MS were seen as the controller of it...
its just meant to inter-connect them, and make them play nicely with each other...
:-(
basically, it takes the Student information app (demographics, grades, schedules) and allows it to interface nicely with the food cafeteria apps and the busing apps...
it also allows for easier state/federal reporting... which may/may not be a good thing depending on your view.
The ZIS bit could very well run on linux, and would be a good thing, if it were... the spec tends to favor an MS implementation because of its recommendation to use a multiple queueing mechanism to persist the messages that need to be passed...
Oh yeh - if you go and get teh MS source code for the ZIS - could you email me if you can actually get it to compile... because i cant
yeh, and then they could make rainbow, special edition ones, and create special "bear-chameleon" releases....
maybe this would eb a good way to get it out to the "masses"... all we need is a stupid collectable gimmick, and it owuld sell like hotcakes...
or grits, if your a troll
damnit, I hope that they finally move to the newest libjpeg so that packages are easier to upgrade...
i';m tired of the libjpeg.so.62 not being found... and then haveing to kludge around to get anything to work...
and put a version of mozilla that can actually be used...
dude... band width theft is a contrived concept. Almost as bad as illicit copying=rape murder and pilleage (piracy)
the difference between spam and "band width theft" is in the eyes of the receiver... I've already been on mailing lists that were worse than spam.
WHich is why this is a free speech concern...
this is an important victory for free speech... Not a defeat of an anti-spamming law...
If a group like planned parent hood, the NRA, the KKK or whatever sends out a message to a large group of people unsolicited, couldnt this be considered spam?
the anti-spam law made it possible to threaten legal action against all of these groups in the guise of "stopping spam"...
Next it will be "for the children"
"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it"
implementations are not.
but the real question here isnt what's wrong... we all know what the problem is..
we need to start trying to figure out how to make things right. Preaching to the choir is not enough.
"hacktivism" sucks... childish and annoying...
so what do we do?
im open to suggestions
now if you would have written a QSort, then it would have been correct...
but a bloated, processor heavy, inefficient bubble sort... recursive no less... think of the stack!
no wonder he marked it wrong
I completely agree with you licensing a series of sounds in a particular order and style (from henceforth called a "song") should not be protected in the manner that it is.
However, if this "song" is arranged, produced, and recorded by a company (lets call this a "track"), then the company is the only entity that should be able to make money from distributing this particular "track".
Meaning this - the "song" isnt protected, but whoever's interpretation of it is.
THis could be considered quite a lot like alogorithms vs. implementations in software.
The algorithm is just an idea (if i do this in this manner, I will produce something). But the implementation is actually taking the idea and doing something with it...
For example... I have an idea of making somethng that allows you to easily edit, format and publish printed works... I'll call it a "WordProcessor". Not a big deal, right... Just an idea..
Now if I implement this idea into lets say "SlashWord", then I can protect my implementation of it. But if someone makes another implementation, like "FreshWord", and it competes with me, they are allowed to do that, and the better implementation wins.
But I cant protect the "idea" of a wordprocessor... Only the implementation...
its NOT part of the OS...
its part of the windowmanager... You dont have to use it with linux... pick a different window manager...
seriously... that may be a more accurate
there is a serious problem in this country... it needs to be fixed.
Hopefully it can be fixed peacefully using the more than adequate methods laid out by the fathers of this country.
but its time to hold our politicians and leaders accountable for what they were elected for -
Representing the PEOPLE
enough said.
what really puzzles me about this whole thing, is that these companies want US to patronize them?
seriously... they treat all of their customers like criminals. They lie, cheat, spread propaganda and attack their customers... And worst of all, they force stuff like the backstreet boys and brittney spears on us...
And yet, the very people that they are attacking are supposed to patronize these fascist dictators of america.
Seriously - if someone described a country where control of the government is centralized into the hands of a few (big corporations), the artwork was controlled by the same few i.e. movies, books, music.
And the NEWS was controlled byt these same groups...
We would call it a fascist/communistic country...
and that folks, is where we are at.
well that was blunt and to the point...
i guess that either i have ethics and do something about them, or I just say I have them and use excuses... hmmm...
maybe there needs to be a "computer ethics" standardization... kindof like the medical ethics that defines what is ethical/unethcical and when programmers cross outside of the line, they get uncertified...
oh well...
one of the hard things here is personal morality in projects. I'm currently involved in a project that could very well be used to track students throughout their primary educational careers. Nationally.
Problem is, its a fun, challenging exciting project, but the ethical questions are still plaguing me.
The problem comes down to economics... if i want to eat, i have to code... but certain projects may go against personal standards...
anyone else figured out where to draw the line?
Thats legal - its called first purchase rights.
you can sell your original copy of it for a profit, or for a loss for that matter, it doesnt matter. Copyright law has traditionaly been clear that you may not reproduce and sell work, but sell the original is fine.
Of course, the riaa/mpaa/software industry would LOVE to get rid of this little bit, so they can sell more originals...
They arent too happy with it because they dont get any more money after the original purchase. I still dont understand how Congress can pass these laws and feel good about themselcves...
in history, there is a pattern that can be seen when a new advance in technology/philosophy comes out and is in prominence, it ends up changing the ruling caste structure.
And every time, there some type of a "struggle" or fight to ouster the old powers that be.
People in control, do not like to lose control.
In the industrial revolution, a new group of people came into power. Thus, the industrial revolution. Of course, during this, there were many fights over workers rights, and eventually, the "good guys" (the workers) pretty much won.
Look at the printing press - that revolutionized mass dissemination of information, too.
Today, the old media pretty much ru(i)ns this country. The art (and therefore the culture) is controled through a ridiculously high barrier to entry (high cost) of mass producing media. Under the old system, if you made a song/movie/book, the only way to mass distribute it was through the various large record companies/movie studios/publishing houses.
TOday, you can reach millions with very very little marginal cost.
That scares teh hell out of the mass media outlets. They've lost control, and are now trying to regain control by erecting artificial barriers.
All of this isnt about stopping pirating of content, its about stopping creation of "un-official" artwork.
We're at a very exciting time in this world, but dont expect the next couple of years to be easy... The old media will not be replaced without a fight.
maybe MS will test the UCITA and not allow reverse-engineering of this "proprietary" tradesecret that they obviously enhanced...
I get the distinct impression that the word "interoperability" has a different definition for MS... basically:
"All of MS's products work with MS products... how much more do you want?
kids... read the article first before flaming...
While it is perfectly legal for me to walk around with a baseball bat, even swinging it around wildly... But it becomes illegal at your nose...
Oh yeh - at this point the baseball bat would become "a deadly weapon"
So posession of these programs is not illegal, but using them to harm someone else's property is... and then they become "weapons".
As long as we only prosecute people for actions and not thoughts, we're fine...
of course... with "hate crime" legislation and profiling people to community forced anti-psychotic medication (really... its happening in california) we may have moved far away from this principle...
hopefully we can fix this system and not have to scrap it...
look at it this way:
If I want to, I can wildly swing my arms about with clenched fists. I have a right to control what I do.
However, the right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose. You have a right to expect that I wont attack you.
If my excersize of my rights interferes with yours, we have a problem.
YOU have every right in the world to choose what you see, look at read, do. You can even try to control what your children do. Good Luck though... Control never works... Education does...
But if you try to restrict EVERYONE to something, you are violating their right to choose. It is about freedom of speech, expression, press... You name it, "Internet Filtering" violates it. BTW, lets be real, its not filtering, its censoring...
You see, the constitution PROTECTS our rights from these kinds of attacks. It doesnt "GIVE" them to us like some people would think, thinking that they were being kind to "give" us these rights.
The forefathers knew mob mentality, and that given enough time, people will vote away all of their rights.
THe supreme court has ruled on this in the CDA decision stating that the internet deserves the strongest 1st amendment protections, and also compared banning sites to burning books...
And you wouldnt advocate burning books, now would you?
making a game by yourself isnt that insane of a task... Most of the incredibly good, older classic games were designed and implemented by very few, sometimes just one, people.
IMHO, I think that since the game market has been turned into a corporate cash cow, the quality, in depth-ness and "experience" have all declined.
Yes, the audio-visual experience is more impressive, but the content is horrible... I cant remember the last new game that I coule get so involved in the characters and storylines that I fogot about the "real" world.
I mean, the classics - wasteland, bard's tale, Ultima III, IV, V were total immersion experiences.
Sigh... I long for the "good ole days" of games that made you use your brain instead of reflexes...
I also long fo rthe day when dying in an RPG was a really horrible thing...
oh well... let me get off this soapbox...