About half my spam comes to the email address that I use on slashdot, most of the other half to the email address I use on google groups. There's a small amount that comes to my main email address that is on my web site, and a small amount to email addresses that I registered in other places that I expected might spam me.
(was that line spoken by the voice in the desert?)
No, it was written on the wall in blood by the guy suffering muse overload. And the quote may be older, but knowing Gaiman it's probably very, very obscure, though. Actually, I'd forgotten that I even had a.sig, as I browse with them turned off.
Reading the linked article "Cosmic Cannon: How an Exploding Star Could Fry Earth", I'm left thinking... So what? It's not like there's anything we could even dream about doing about it, except maybe get off the planet so all our eggs aren't in one basket, and that isn't going to happen (a viable colony that can surive forever without us) for a long, long time. So, why even worry about it? If it happens, we won't even know it, except maybe briefly.
In all three cases, they've actually rewritten their stories to reflect my bitching, at least in some minor ways. Amazing, huh?
Yeah, me too. I complained about the negative protrayol of DVD Jon, and they changed the wording. Now I'm looking forward to them improving their use of alt and title tags on their images.
Ignoring the ethical issues, what could be legally done to me if I went over to SourceForge and started a project called "Mozilla RDBMS"?
The Godzilla trademark holders would add you to their list. (Actually, they stopped chasing Davezilla when he stopped using a lizard logo, so you might be okay)
The login page has "CAUTION: It may be possible for someone monitoring your internet connection to view the results of this inquiry." scrolling by in red, so I presume they know that their system is wide open.
Oh, I get it. Cars should be $500 new, and we should be forced to buy $1000 worth of gas, from the company we bought the car from, ad infinum. What a wonderful world that would be!
Straw man. I'm not saying that this model should be expanded to other areas, areas that the public clearly don't want it to apply to. In addition, no-one is compelled to buy games for the X-Box, you might be happy with the bundle that came with it, I'm not proposing that you be frogmarched back to the retailer every month.
If they want to regulate what you can do with their product, enter into a CONTRACT
A large portion of the console market is made up of people under the age of majority. Also it would make second-hand sales and gift purchases really awkward. My point is, the great unwashed don't want that complication, all they want is cheap consoles. This can only be achieved with protection, either technical or legal. They are prepared to accept the restrictions that come with this.
The Works in question are the CD you get with the service or other software they gave you (like the modem drivers), not stuff you wrote. Your grasp of legalese (along with nearly everyone else here, sadly) needs work.
Oops, my bad. It's rather tragic, though, that the ordinary person has to understand legalese just to connect to the internet.
This is touching on a legitimate concern. Let me explain.
Premise: The general public want to buy consoles as presents for each other, and the price has to be under $500 at the very most, preferably under $200. They are prepared to pay $50 for a game that will bring enjoyment for the whole family for several months (1 year on, my friends are still playing Halo every week).
Solution: The manufacturer sells consoles at a loss, hoping to make their profits on the games sales.
Problem: Hackers will mod the console so that it can run software that the manufacturer does not make any money on.
Solution: Create 'safe harbour' legislation that allows the public to have what they want. The manufacturer can sell their hardware at a loss, and make the money back on the games, without fear of losing a fortune on consoles that will not create a revenue stream (e.g. LinuXBox media station).
I'm being serious here, what's the problem with the above situation? Without the safe market, the consoles wouldn't get made, so by buying under-priced hardware and hacking it, you're pissing in the pool for everyone else. I doubt that Sony or MS would have released their current consoles at the price they did if anyone could write games with no royalty to the console manufacturer.
Yes I know, but this article is in reference to Australia, which generally considers itself as much part of the free world as America. It isn't, of course, for many of the same reasons. I find it hard to believe that a post that basically says "The rest of the world has reason to be concerned about free speech too, you know" has generated so much response.
If I upload someone else's data, I have no right to grant the ISP the rights that they claim, therefore they don't have those rights. What I'm unsure about, however, is whether their terms of service prohibit me from posting material that I do not have the right to grant rights over. If so, then I probably can't post any GPL'd software. Let's look.
Hmmm, this is interesting:
You agree that all content, software, personal identifiers (including addresses) and anything else we make available to you in connection with our Services (together "Works") are protected by copyright, trade marks and other intellectual property rights and laws.
So no posting Project Gutenberg texts, then. Taken literally, anything I post has to be trademarked.
You warrant that you will not:
license, assign, otherwise transfer, make available or grant any interest in any part of the Works to any other person
So, no GPL'd software that I wrote then, but presumably other peoples' GPL'd software is ok.
Xtra does not claim ownership of any content or material you provide or make available through the Services ("Customer Material"). However, by placing any Customer Material on our Websites or Systems (including posting messages, uploading files, importing data or engaging in any other form of communication), you grant to Xtra a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide licence to do the following in respect of the Customer Materials:
use, copy, sublicence, redistribute, adapt, transmit, publish, delete, edit and/or broadcast, publicly perform or display, and
sublicence to any third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the rights granted,
in each case for the limited purposes for which you provided or made the Customer Materials available or to enable us and our suppliers to provide the Services.
Seems reasonable, they need the right to distribute the data, they might want to keep an archive, and they might want to sell that archive as an asset. Note the limiting nature of the last paragraph.
IMO, there's nothing sinister here, although the first section I quoted is just incompetently written.
Just because the USA has free speech in it's constitution, doesn't mean that they have a patent on it. Of course there's no global right to free speech, but does that mean we should just shut up when it's threatened? I don't think this is a free speech issue really, though.
Slashdot Mirror
About half my spam comes to the email address that I use on slashdot, most of the other half to the email address I use on google groups. There's a small amount that comes to my main email address that is on my web site, and a small amount to email addresses that I registered in other places that I expected might spam me.
Reading the linked article "Cosmic Cannon: How an Exploding Star Could Fry Earth", I'm left thinking... So what? It's not like there's anything we could even dream about doing about it, except maybe get off the planet so all our eggs aren't in one basket, and that isn't going to happen (a viable colony that can surive forever without us) for a long, long time. So, why even worry about it? If it happens, we won't even know it, except maybe briefly.
What, the bit about Triganic Ningis? Wow, I must have been under-rating Valéry all these years.
That's why I don't have much in stocks. My investments are primarily in real estate, which is doing very nicely over here, thank you.
Cmon slashdot sucks when @#$%holes like you bug people about a joke.
The login page has "CAUTION: It may be possible for someone monitoring your internet connection to view the results of this inquiry." scrolling by in red, so I presume they know that their system is wide open.
http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?na tive_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6513398631
This is touching on a legitimate concern. Let me explain.
Premise: The general public want to buy consoles as presents for each other, and the price has to be under $500 at the very most, preferably under $200. They are prepared to pay $50 for a game that will bring enjoyment for the whole family for several months (1 year on, my friends are still playing Halo every week).
Solution: The manufacturer sells consoles at a loss, hoping to make their profits on the games sales.
Problem: Hackers will mod the console so that it can run software that the manufacturer does not make any money on.
Solution: Create 'safe harbour' legislation that allows the public to have what they want. The manufacturer can sell their hardware at a loss, and make the money back on the games, without fear of losing a fortune on consoles that will not create a revenue stream (e.g. LinuXBox media station).
I'm being serious here, what's the problem with the above situation? Without the safe market, the consoles wouldn't get made, so by buying under-priced hardware and hacking it, you're pissing in the pool for everyone else. I doubt that Sony or MS would have released their current consoles at the price they did if anyone could write games with no royalty to the console manufacturer.
Yes I know, but this article is in reference to Australia, which generally considers itself as much part of the free world as America. It isn't, of course, for many of the same reasons. I find it hard to believe that a post that basically says "The rest of the world has reason to be concerned about free speech too, you know" has generated so much response.
Did you see the Futurama episode about flag eating? Hilarous!
Hmmm, this is interesting:So no posting Project Gutenberg texts, then. Taken literally, anything I post has to be trademarked.So, no GPL'd software that I wrote then, but presumably other peoples' GPL'd software is ok.Seems reasonable, they need the right to distribute the data, they might want to keep an archive, and they might want to sell that archive as an asset. Note the limiting nature of the last paragraph.
IMO, there's nothing sinister here, although the first section I quoted is just incompetently written.