When Canonical/Ubuntu takes an idea and runs with it, odds are good that everyone benefits, and the results are freely shared without any real encumbrance or price.
When a for-profit company takes an idea and runs with it, odds are better than good that everyone will have to pay for the privilege of reaping the benefits, and a patent or two will prevent anyone else from implementing it for at least the next 25 years.
Not that I'm taking sides (after all, Google's idea-gathering is voluntary), but that's how it usually shakes out.
Their competitors never attained monopoly status, so we've never seen what they would do if they did.
If wishes were fishes, etc... but that's not the point. The point is, Microsoft did commit illegal acts, which its competitors could have done just as easily with or without a monopoly.
...because it implies that Microsoft is somehow more 'determined' in their profit-seeking than any other corporation.
Well, given that Microsoft has actually been convicted (more than once) of some rather illegal activities related to the abuse of monopoly? One could say that yes, Microsoft IS more "determined" than their competition in profit-seeking, since the competition stopped well short of breaking laws to seek theirs.
Otherwise yeah -the "M$" moniker is (or should be) dead.
Well, yes and no. IIRC, if you're a WA resident and buy a vehicle in Oregon (like, say, a car), you get to fork over the sales tax @ the WA state DMV where you get your tags. Not sure of the lower limit, but while yes you can buy groceries and such on our side of the Columbia w/o paying sales tax, you cannot go and purchase a car w/o the state of Washington getting their vig.
Now buying gas in WA OTOH? No problem... unless WA coperates and installs that gas tax reader thingy in every gas station within x miles of the WA/OR border. Same goes with ID and CA.
err, it's 65 (which still sucks, but then again most roads in and about the Cascade Range get pretty suicidal @ 70-75 mph...)
What I want to know is, what would they do if I bought all my gas in Vancouver, WA (which is awfully close to Portland... takes less than 20 minutes to get there from my house)
Could just be a quickie game of 'chicken'... they likely hoped that NCSoft would rather settle out of court and 'license' the technology for less (just barely less) than it would normally cost to gear up the lawyers and take it to court (which costs in time, $$$, etc...)
This in turn would give the troll a precedent with which to go after anyone else.
*sigh* - what I wouldn't give for decent tort reform, in which any plaintiff who is a corporation or representative thereof, and loses, is forced to pay the defendant, say, 10x the legal fees of the defendant as a penalty. That, or legal fees + money originally demanded by the plaintiff (and that amount must be stated up front). It would at least cause the more idiotic amoung us to stop and think before litigating when they cannot innovate...
OTOH, at least all of those distros would still use common and open protocols (real LDAP, NFS, etc) to interconnect, instead of a locked-down/munged/proprietary set, which means that you either buy from one vendor alone, or you get screwed.
When do they start suing the Intel Corporation or Acer (one of whom had coined the term IIRC), and not the penny-ante hobbyist sites?
Ah - but I guess it's cheaper and easier to pick on the small fry first, eh?
Seriously - yes Psion has a real trademark on it, but what kind of screwball system do we all live in where (litigation-wise) the little guy gets it in the neck first?
You do realize that it is but two small steps from being glad that someone has died, to actively wishing others just like him dead, then seeking to actually make that happen...
...right?
The guy had his ideology, you have yours, I have mine - they are all faulty and they are all wrong in the balance of things. Neither one is a reason to wish or be glad that a human being died.
(...and seriously: "exploit the public"? "abuse its institutions"? Every frickin' politician on the planet does that... what makes him any different?)
Not only that, but if she wants the child, why should the father have the right to stop her from being a single mother?
Devil's Advocate: The same rights that a man has to stop an abortion and raise the child himself (i.e. none).
The rest I can agree with, though we're talking hypotheticals, so I thought I'd have fun with it.
What he said is that since women have the right to say, "I don't want the responsibility of a baby right now, let me get an abortion" the man should be able to say, "I don't want the responsibility of a baby right now, let me give up my rights and responsibilities as a father: she can't come to me for child support, and I can't request visitation rights or any such other thing."
Frankly, I think that's pretty fair.
I agree, perfectly. I wish the courts and legislatures would agree to that. It would force a whole lot of folks to start thinking ahead (in many cases - for once).
There's no justification for a woman to force any responsibilities onto the father of an unplanned pregnancy: she had the ability to prevent the pregnancy all on her own, but was just as irresponsible as the father.
Agreed. Perfectly.
What I would like is a right for the father to prevent an abortion. If I got a woman pregnant and she doesn't want the baby, I don't think I have any legal recourse to stop her from having an abortion (and I don't really have any experience on the subject, so I could be wrong).
Nope - I'm thinking that you don't. She can quickly claim that you're putting her life at risk by forcing a carry-to-term, ending any hope of that happening... Cool idea, and eminently fair, at least to the child.
Basically, I'm pro-choice, but would never want a woman pregnant with my child to make that choice.
Thing is, you have no choice in that matter. Only she does. If you did, then, as GGGP (?) said, women would think ahead (we already know that most men can't), birth control usage would rise big-time, and abortions for convenience would probably become as rare as Lottery odds...
A lawsuit @ Nintendo because someone (or rather, plural someones) was (were) dumb enough to toss a remote hard enough to crack a television set!?...
Seriously.
WTF?
Now, if'n y'all don't mind, I have to go sue the folks who make Red Bull now, since their cans weren't shaped in a way to prevent me from dropping it on the table and accidentally soaking my laptop while absorbing the sheer chutzpah of the ambulance-chaser's commentary in the referenced article.
I believe he's saying that if, say, men could have the right to force (by court order) a pregnant girlfriend/spouse/whatever to get an abortion on his demand and expense (this right being based on the premise that it's his kid/DNA/whatever too, further based on equal rights to said kid/DNA/whatever, etc)... that the law would change in very short order to outlaw all abortions of convenience.
The UK does have problems with privacy - big time. That much I certainly agree to.
That said, the Brits (Heaven bless 'em) have been notorious for lying to census takers ever since the original Domesday Census, in spite of the penalty back then of instant execution by the crown.:)
That argument has never really held weight with me. Do you also advocate gay people remaining in the closet? After all, if people know that they are gay, then if the government decides to execute gay people, they are fucked. How about atheists? People who wear glasses?
Unless you can show me a government repository or list of folks who are gay, wear glasses, athist, etc... such an argument doesn't really hold all that much water, yanno?
So you'll happily post your bank account number and PIN code, then? How about your Social Security number and real name (and if not a US Citizen, similar ID)?
Privacy may or may not be "contrary to democracy", but it is essential to any civilized society. I seriously do not want or need to know how often you do anything sexual and in what ways. I also have zero interest or need to know your bank account access details, what kind of food you eat or may be allergic to, or any other detail that is usually private for that matter.
That's the thing - there's a huge difference between information that is in the Public Interest (e.g. criminal records, court proceedings, Deeds and property abstracts, etc), and stuff that only you know about and would prefer to not spread around.
I mean, what is the government going to do with my DNA? Clone me? Invade my privacy by finding out what diseases I'm vulnerable to?
Use it to drag you out of your house and charge you with a crime you may or may not have committed, just because a computer says that you might be the suspect based on that DNA (when in truth you may well not be). All it would take is for a small database corruption or some programmatic error, and suddenly you end up having a lot of explaining to do, even if you have nothing to explain.
There's also the 'what if' angle of if/when your government gets repressive. Easier to figure out where and who you are down the road when they have DNA to match you up against...
Err, you do realize that DNA matching can still be done if someone is still in the process of being tried for a crime, right? You can also keep the lab results of such matching forever... just not the DNA itself.
The ruling only says that you can't keep it forever, not that you can't use whatever DNA you find/get during the process.
Depends - those "billions" of zombies have to be defended against other bot herders, are likely to have already been strip-mined of any useful identity information (e.g. the data has already been stolen and sold) and are highly liable to simply bog down and/or die, causing the owner(s) to get a clue and fix the thing(s).
Meanwhile, you still have all those Macs sitting there, with 99.9% (or so) of their owners perfectly oblivious to anyone putting it towards nefarious use.
Sure, you have to put more work in up-front, but once you get in, you get a much greater and more long-term return, and/or get some very quality information. Why? Well... one: the owner obviously has some ducats in his wallet - he bought a Mac. two: odds are very good that nobody else has pilfered the data. three: there's almost always enough resource horsepower to go around on a Mac, so you can get a lot done on one without alerting anyone --especially the owner/user-- that you're doing it.
No matter how you slice it, you simply get a better return on busting into OSX machines... but then, crims are usually too lazy to think such things through, no?
Slashdot Mirror
...assuming the big ISPs would allow such a thing within the bounds of their natural monoplies...
As sibling said - you've been paying with your eyes.
The guy is a sysadmin. No surprises at all from this quarter as to how he came across such a discovery...
Probably due to perception of result.
When Canonical/Ubuntu takes an idea and runs with it, odds are good that everyone benefits, and the results are freely shared without any real encumbrance or price.
When a for-profit company takes an idea and runs with it, odds are better than good that everyone will have to pay for the privilege of reaping the benefits, and a patent or two will prevent anyone else from implementing it for at least the next 25 years.
Not that I'm taking sides (after all, Google's idea-gathering is voluntary), but that's how it usually shakes out.
They were convicted for abusing that monopoly.
Which is what I said - exactly.
Their competitors never attained monopoly status, so we've never seen what they would do if they did.
If wishes were fishes, etc... but that's not the point. The point is, Microsoft did commit illegal acts, which its competitors could have done just as easily with or without a monopoly.
...because it implies that Microsoft is somehow more 'determined' in their profit-seeking than any other corporation.
Well, given that Microsoft has actually been convicted (more than once) of some rather illegal activities related to the abuse of monopoly? One could say that yes, Microsoft IS more "determined" than their competition in profit-seeking, since the competition stopped well short of breaking laws to seek theirs.
Otherwise yeah -the "M$" moniker is (or should be) dead.
You and sibling forgot about zero (which, yes, you can use). Count 'em up.
Well, yes and no. IIRC, if you're a WA resident and buy a vehicle in Oregon (like, say, a car), you get to fork over the sales tax @ the WA state DMV where you get your tags. Not sure of the lower limit, but while yes you can buy groceries and such on our side of the Columbia w/o paying sales tax, you cannot go and purchase a car w/o the state of Washington getting their vig.
Now buying gas in WA OTOH? No problem... unless WA coperates and installs that gas tax reader thingy in every gas station within x miles of the WA/OR border. Same goes with ID and CA.
err, it's 65 (which still sucks, but then again most roads in and about the Cascade Range get pretty suicidal @ 70-75 mph...)
What I want to know is, what would they do if I bought all my gas in Vancouver, WA (which is awfully close to Portland... takes less than 20 minutes to get there from my house)
Could just be a quickie game of 'chicken'... they likely hoped that NCSoft would rather settle out of court and 'license' the technology for less (just barely less) than it would normally cost to gear up the lawyers and take it to court (which costs in time, $$$, etc...)
This in turn would give the troll a precedent with which to go after anyone else.
*sigh* - what I wouldn't give for decent tort reform, in which any plaintiff who is a corporation or representative thereof, and loses, is forced to pay the defendant, say, 10x the legal fees of the defendant as a penalty. That, or legal fees + money originally demanded by the plaintiff (and that amount must be stated up front). It would at least cause the more idiotic amoung us to stop and think before litigating when they cannot innovate...
OTOH, at least all of those distros would still use common and open protocols (real LDAP, NFS, etc) to interconnect, instead of a locked-down/munged/proprietary set, which means that you either buy from one vendor alone, or you get screwed.
When do they start suing the Intel Corporation or Acer (one of whom had coined the term IIRC), and not the penny-ante hobbyist sites?
Ah - but I guess it's cheaper and easier to pick on the small fry first, eh?
Seriously - yes Psion has a real trademark on it, but what kind of screwball system do we all live in where (litigation-wise) the little guy gets it in the neck first?
Actually, GP attempted to mimic diff.
Must be a COBOL programmer.
You do realize that it is but two small steps from being glad that someone has died, to actively wishing others just like him dead, then seeking to actually make that happen...
The guy had his ideology, you have yours, I have mine - they are all faulty and they are all wrong in the balance of things. Neither one is a reason to wish or be glad that a human being died.
(...and seriously: "exploit the public"? "abuse its institutions"? Every frickin' politician on the planet does that... what makes him any different?)
(bring on the troll mods, I know they're coming).
Not only that, but if she wants the child, why should the father have the right to stop her from being a single mother?
Devil's Advocate: The same rights that a man has to stop an abortion and raise the child himself (i.e. none).
The rest I can agree with, though we're talking hypotheticals, so I thought I'd have fun with it.
What he said is that since women have the right to say, "I don't want the responsibility of a baby right now, let me get an abortion" the man should be able to say, "I don't want the responsibility of a baby right now, let me give up my rights and responsibilities as a father: she can't come to me for child support, and I can't request visitation rights or any such other thing."
Frankly, I think that's pretty fair.
I agree, perfectly. I wish the courts and legislatures would agree to that. It would force a whole lot of folks to start thinking ahead (in many cases - for once).
There's no justification for a woman to force any responsibilities onto the father of an unplanned pregnancy: she had the ability to prevent the pregnancy all on her own, but was just as irresponsible as the father.
Agreed. Perfectly.
What I would like is a right for the father to prevent an abortion. If I got a woman pregnant and she doesn't want the baby, I don't think I have any legal recourse to stop her from having an abortion (and I don't really have any experience on the subject, so I could be wrong).
Nope - I'm thinking that you don't. She can quickly claim that you're putting her life at risk by forcing a carry-to-term, ending any hope of that happening... Cool idea, and eminently fair, at least to the child.
Basically, I'm pro-choice, but would never want a woman pregnant with my child to make that choice.
Thing is, you have no choice in that matter. Only she does. If you did, then, as GGGP (?) said, women would think ahead (we already know that most men can't), birth control usage would rise big-time, and abortions for convenience would probably become as rare as Lottery odds...
A lawsuit @ Nintendo because someone (or rather, plural someones) was (were) dumb enough to toss a remote hard enough to crack a television set!?...
Seriously.
WTF?
Now, if'n y'all don't mind, I have to go sue the folks who make Red Bull now, since their cans weren't shaped in a way to prevent me from dropping it on the table and accidentally soaking my laptop while absorbing the sheer chutzpah of the ambulance-chaser's commentary in the referenced article.
I believe he's saying that if, say, men could have the right to force (by court order) a pregnant girlfriend/spouse/whatever to get an abortion on his demand and expense (this right being based on the premise that it's his kid/DNA/whatever too, further based on equal rights to said kid/DNA/whatever, etc)... that the law would change in very short order to outlaw all abortions of convenience.
Doesn't anyone drink Labatt's Blue up there anymore?
Damn... you HAVE fallen into cultural disrepair. ;)
Two words: "no preference".
The UK does have problems with privacy - big time. That much I certainly agree to.
That said, the Brits (Heaven bless 'em) have been notorious for lying to census takers ever since the original Domesday Census, in spite of the penalty back then of instant execution by the crown. :)
That argument has never really held weight with me. Do you also advocate gay people remaining in the closet? After all, if people know that they are gay, then if the government decides to execute gay people, they are fucked. How about atheists? People who wear glasses?
Unless you can show me a government repository or list of folks who are gay, wear glasses, athist, etc... such an argument doesn't really hold all that much water, yanno?
I'm not telling you to give up anything.
You sure you didn't accidentally reply to the wrong post?
So you'll happily post your bank account number and PIN code, then? How about your Social Security number and real name (and if not a US Citizen, similar ID)?
Privacy may or may not be "contrary to democracy", but it is essential to any civilized society. I seriously do not want or need to know how often you do anything sexual and in what ways. I also have zero interest or need to know your bank account access details, what kind of food you eat or may be allergic to, or any other detail that is usually private for that matter.
That's the thing - there's a huge difference between information that is in the Public Interest (e.g. criminal records, court proceedings, Deeds and property abstracts, etc), and stuff that only you know about and would prefer to not spread around.
I mean, what is the government going to do with my DNA? Clone me? Invade my privacy by finding out what diseases I'm vulnerable to?
Use it to drag you out of your house and charge you with a crime you may or may not have committed, just because a computer says that you might be the suspect based on that DNA (when in truth you may well not be). All it would take is for a small database corruption or some programmatic error, and suddenly you end up having a lot of explaining to do, even if you have nothing to explain.
There's also the 'what if' angle of if/when your government gets repressive. Easier to figure out where and who you are down the road when they have DNA to match you up against...
Err, you do realize that DNA matching can still be done if someone is still in the process of being tried for a crime, right? You can also keep the lab results of such matching forever... just not the DNA itself.
The ruling only says that you can't keep it forever, not that you can't use whatever DNA you find/get during the process.
Depends - those "billions" of zombies have to be defended against other bot herders, are likely to have already been strip-mined of any useful identity information (e.g. the data has already been stolen and sold) and are highly liable to simply bog down and/or die, causing the owner(s) to get a clue and fix the thing(s).
Meanwhile, you still have all those Macs sitting there, with 99.9% (or so) of their owners perfectly oblivious to anyone putting it towards nefarious use.
Sure, you have to put more work in up-front, but once you get in, you get a much greater and more long-term return, and/or get some very quality information. Why? Well... one: the owner obviously has some ducats in his wallet - he bought a Mac. two: odds are very good that nobody else has pilfered the data. three: there's almost always enough resource horsepower to go around on a Mac, so you can get a lot done on one without alerting anyone --especially the owner/user-- that you're doing it.
No matter how you slice it, you simply get a better return on busting into OSX machines... but then, crims are usually too lazy to think such things through, no?