Says who? I personally prefer that the state has a great deal of input into the fate of killers, as I prefer to see killers kept off the streets.
I prefer killers kept off the streets also, however, life without parole would be just as effective at keeping killers off the streets.
If you are so death penalty, then I can't wait for the day you are in the wrong place at the wrong time and get wrongly convicted to death from a crime you didn't commit.
As for:
ntentional in the same sense that the driver causing the accident intentionally turned the steering wheel the wrong way. (Or similar allegory)
You are shitting me right? If a driver intentionally turned the steering wheel the wrong way it is no longer an accident, it is intentionally causing a wreck and killing someone, hence murder and the person should be tried for murder and sentenced to life without the chance of parole, however, in the event that it is a 'car accident' there is no intention implied. Intention and accident are mutally exclusive.
You are correct that wrongful conviction is the ultimate problem here, however, putting someone in jail for the rest of their life as opposed to killing them, means the innocent person at least has the opportunity to gain some kind of meaningful life and have amends made in the event they their innocence is proved.
Okay so you have personally witnessed every crime that someone has been put to death for? Even in the event that you have, why should I take your word for it? How do I know you don't have a grudge against the person you are testifying against, or worse still that you are in fact a serial killers whos preferred MO is to cause the state to perform your actual murders for you?
Even in the event of video evidence such as a man strangling a woman to death, how to we know this wasn't consentual? way they both got their rocks of and the woman accidently died? The video clearly shows the man killing the woman, however, given consentual circumstances this is death by misadventure or at worst manslaughter, the man didn't intentionally kill the woman therefore the state shouldn't intentially kill the man.
Failing that another situation, you find out your child has been sexually abused by a pervert, you go there to kick the crap out of the man, all that is caught on video is you kicking the guy, you accidently kill him do you deserve to be executed for this crime?
Or how about a real life case, a man, his wife and child are in a car with his friend, the friend has a criminal history, during the trip he shoot a cop dead, he then lies saying the man and woman had commited the murder, they are both sentenced to death, the man is executed, shortly after the actual killer confesses the truth that he had killed the cop, and then kidnapped the man and woman, the woman is released from deathrow but her husband has already been murdered by the state.......but hey there was a witness that saw him kill the cop nevermind the fact that he was lying.
Actually people with 'normal moral values' do also object to the death penalty.
Can you always be 100% certain the person being executed is guilty?
Moratoria
Which btw usually breaks half the packages in the system, additionally I have to watch out for questions since ports doesn't remember my original install settings, it doesn't take much account for dependencies, on several occasions recently I have patched a freebsd system using ports and found one or more packages are broken after the install, additionally at the end my pkgdb is corrupted and I have to go through the whole process of rebuilding it.
Gentoo is much more simple:
emerge --sync && emerge -uD world
Additionally providing you didn't pass USE during the build it will build according to your original settings.
In my opinion ports is the worst package system out there, even a bsd developer agrees that ports isn't that great, however, whatever floats your boat, opinions are like as*holes everyone has one, personally I like portage, if you prefer ports go with whatever works for you. FreeBSD as an operating system is great, but I would prefer to use portage for bsd as my package manager.
I use bsd ports on a daily basis, and it is pretty weak, you can specify no X11 with portage:
USE="-X" emerge imagemagick
See nice and easy. Ports is very unstable with patching etc, I shouldn't have to go through:
cvsup -g -L 2/etc/cvsup_ports portversion -l "that ports isn't that great, however, whatever floats your boat, opinions are like as*holes everyone has one, personally I like portage, if you prefer ports go with whatever works for you. FreeBSD as an operating system is great, but I would prefer to use portage for bsd as my package manager.
Besides this was just one example, when it comes to installing your system just the way you want it rather than how your distribution says you should have it, it is just easier with gentoo than anyother distro!
One important disclaimer, this is my preference, I use many distros in my job as much as I love gentoo I wouldn't dream of using it in many situations especially where rock solid stability is important, although I am 'very' experienced with gentoo and I am about 99% confident I can keep it stable in any situation for some tasks I would use debian or even redhat (if the support is a major thing). The wonderful thing about linux is you have these choices, you preference debian for your desktop that is your choice perhaps you even find it easier, but unless you have a point of comparision (ie. you have used gentoo) you really can't judge how useful portage is. I find gentoo to be a lot easier to maintain and get to my very exacting specifications, plus once it is installed and exactly how I like it there is a much bigger sense of achievement.
Yes it is possible to custom compile the options you choose, however, it is a lot easier using portage:
USE="-perl -jpeg png" emerge imagemagick
Rather than:./configure --prefix=/usr/local --no-perl --no-jpeg --enable-png make make test make install
Then later you want to uninstall if you compiled from source you are up sh*t creek with gentoo:
emerge --unmerge imagemagick
Besides this is just one example when you expand this to hundreds of packages your life becomes a hundred times easier.
Additionally you compile from source you have to manually watch out for updates, patches, etc with your customised packages from portage to upgrade is as simple as:
emerge -uD world
Which will find and upgrade any packages from your world file.
As someone who has used Gentoo for about 4 years, debian for about 5 and before those Suse, I feel I am able to jump in at this point.
Just because you took a look at the install instructions doesn't mean you are able to judge the distro, gentoo is easily the most powerful operating system I have ever encountered, the amount of control it gives you is way beyond anything else out there, seriously better than debian, any bsd, solaris, AIX, hp-ux.
Yes the installation used to be fairly complex (although a great way to learn more about the inner workings of linux), but it has become simplified over the years, and now although I still wouldn't recommend it to a complete newbie, it is ready for a basic user.
Debian with apt cannot compare to portage, and as for features that should be enabled......I disagree, when installing imagemagick I may not want certain features like perl bindings or jpg support, gentoo doesn't just let me add features it also lets me disable them, this in turn reduces clutter on my system and makes life that little bit easier.
Additionally Unfinished Tales, I think both of these books give a better insight of Tolkiens vision of Middle Earth, although they were compiled by Chris Tolkien there are mostly his fathers work in Unfinished Tales Chris adds notes at the end of each story explaining his opinion of how his father intended to continue with this story, generally I agreed with this opinions.
I don't see Chris as a hack, he realised that a huge number of people want to see more of JRR's work and as such he attempts to clean up essays and notes his father left behind and release them, remember JRR originally said there was to be two books released after TLOTR, we can count the Similarion as one, I wouldn't really count Unfinished Tales as one, however, this new book could fit the profile.
But speaking of linux, in my experience, as soon as you start to manipulate system config files directly instead of using the GUI tools, you can break the gui tools such that they can't understand your changes
If this is the case the GUI is broken in the first place or you haven't used valid syntax when making your changes!
Actually I would say the parent is perfect to judge linspire, their main demographic is windows users, he admits to being a windows user and says he likes linspire since it is so easy to use.
I have been using linux for about 10 years, my main OS is gentoo, I am a Unix systems administrator, I would never consider introducing a windows user to linux through gentoo, or debian they need a gateway distribution, I don't feel fedora fits this bill well enough the same applies to SuSE, however linspire(freespire) are ideal, they get the users used to working in an environment that is similar enough to windows for them to find their way around, when these users want to move onto something more powerful they can change distributions.
As for:
1/ trivial to get started, difficult to do non-standard tasks and 2/ hard to understand, easy to do your own thing".
Are you serious?? Linux is linux, yes there is differences between distributions, yes perhaps fedora provides a nice GUI to set up wireless networking and perhaps linspire provides a nice installation method but once the user becomes experienced enough with using Linux they are usually going to learn to bypass the pretty tools anyway and get themselves into the guts of the system, in which case the distribution itself is really just a matter of personal preference.
Once you get to an operating system that attempts to give the user the power to do advanced things in a simple way you find other difficulties and complications. There is no such thing as the perfect operating system for everybody.
I completely agree, when you have someone that introduces himself as..... 'a certified ethical hacker' right after mentioning his name and job title, you realise right away this person doesn't know shit about security or the processes needed to achieve it. This guy spends 90% of his day attempting to impress people with his 133t hAx0R skills, and amazing ability to write viruses using 'a package downloaded from the internet'.
That's really part of my point.. if you're inviting them / letting them to the audit, then wtf is wrong with you? Let them come back with a police warrant, let the police investigate whatevertheheck.
Generally when they show up to perform an audit (unannounced) they bring the police with them and a warrant to search your computers.
Great, so basically microsoft is gonna scare people away from using the update site, so all the pirated copies out there will now be even more insecure since they won't be using patches for fear of getting the GWA software install:o/
I can almost hear the matching of the botnet armies, heading for my firewall, oh and I must remember to buy a couple of 300G hard drives to handle the extra spam on my mail server.
Now, in the article you cited, it says that the BSA "collects fees of up to $150,000 for every unregistered software program installed on a company's computers." However, it also says that they collect a little over $10m total per year. It doesn't take a genius to work out that they're not really getting $150,000 per installed copy, or anywhere close to it, despite the probably-not-accidental ambiguity in the former statement.
The article says "up to $150,000" I stated up to $150,000 how is there any ambiguity there?
In the article you cited, it says that the BSA may conduct a raid if they believe they're being had. However, it also notes that they require judicial oversight to do so, and that they must be accompanied by US marshalls during the raid. They don't have any magical powers of entry, search and seizure.
The fact that they can to easily get US Marshalls to support them in a raid in the first place is of concern, in other nations such as Thailand they have the right to conduct raids with no judicial oversight at all, this is a point of concern and the direction the BSA seems to wish to go everywhere.
In the article you cited, two people say the burden of proof is on the defendant, and that only certain evidence of licensing will be accepted. But guess what? Those two people are the BSA's enforcement goons, and their opinion is irrelevant. What counts is what the court believes, and courts are not known for liking corporate lawyers pretending to be judges, even in the US.
So because the BSA made the statement that means it isn't something to worry about? If it isn't true and they are saying it is you have a basis of proving the BSA lies, if it is true my original concerns remain. Regardless it is proof that either they have more power than the law allows, or that they lie, you want to trust a group that obviously lies with doing your software audit when they stand to make large sums of money out of it?
And of course, the article is based on the US, which means it's still just as irrelevant to this discussion as any other US-based anecdotes. What is it about Americans and this thread; is it really so hard to grasp that legal systems elsewhere may work differently, and the fact that the US court system is so screwed up that barratry is an effective means of money-making doesn't necessarily mean the rest of the world would accept the same behaviour?
Yeah what is it with Americans? If you had of read my previous comment, I am a UK citizen, I am from England. I am making statements about the BSA as a whole not just the UK arm of operations, when people refer to Microsoft do they say microsoft UK or microsoft US? No because it is an organisation as a whole.
I agree that the US legal system is fundamentaly fucked up, however, do a google search and see the rights the BSA has all over the world, yes they have different levels of power in different countries, however, there is one virtual constant, in almost every nation they seem to have a little more power than any similar organisation in that nation.
As I already stated I am making points about the BSA as a whole not just one small part of the organisation because I believe the behaviour of the US wing or the Thai wing of the organisation should reflect the behavour of the company as a whole. In the EU hearing on Microsoft they would bring up points about their American operations are you saying what a company/organisation does in another country is irrelevant? Because I think that is a very naive view, you shouldn't ever look at one small part of a problem you view the problem as a whole!
We're talking explicitly about the UK, so your comments about the US are irrelevant
We are talking about the BSA, in the UK or the US it is still the same organisation so I don't think it is irrelevant. You are right the BSA has no rights to stop a court awarding costs, however, a government does.
If you are such a big supporter of the BSA cool I hope with all my heart you get audited and realise just how corrupt their operation is, I on the other hand completely disagree with every principle the BSA operates under, I am in no way supporting piracy, however, tactics like this sicken me to my stomach, yes people should be careful about their software practises, however, mistakes can be made and as the BSA often points out the burden of proof is the responsibility of the victim, not exactly innocent until proven guilty is it? If they come there and find you are running 50 copies of windows 98SE you still have the licenses and the boxes they came in but you don't have a copy of the original invoice (most companies maintain invoices for 3-5 years) you are pirating the software.....as such they will charge you up to $150,000 for every copy of the software they find.
But since you are such an obvious supporter of theirs I guess this is okay with you.
I am a UK citizen that lives in the US and on both sides of the atlantic I have worked for companies that have recieved threatening letters from the BSA, even although both companies where fully compliant in both cases we had to stop what we were doing and do full software audits to get the BSA to STFU, in the case of the second company we were using totally legal versions of windows XP pro on most workstations but we couldn't find one invoice for 5 of the 200 workstations we had, as such we had to go through the time consuming process of contacting Dell and getting them to trace back through their records to reissue an invoice for us. The BSA are scum and I can't wait for their powers to be dissolved.
I can't find the document right now, but basically you agree from the time of an audit you will pay all legal fees incurred by the BSA related to your audit, even if you are found innocent.
Incorrect, rights granted in the US by congress basically state that as soon as the BSA targets your for audit you are responsible for all costs, if they find you guilty even though there is reasonable doubt you have the right to defend yourself, however, you are responsible for the legal fees for the BSA even if you are found innocent. If you are found innocent and don't wish to pay the costs of the investigation guess what you go to court and pay all legal fees.
To my understanding the UK has a similar agreement with the BSA, although you can fight it, it is a case where win or lose you still pay all the legal fees which will usually be higher than the original fine they tried to force upon you.
The difference being if you invite them into your office for investigation then yes I agree you should pay, however, in the event a disgruntled employee reports you are using pirated software (when you aren't), they come in with your invitation and investigate you, there is no reason you should have to pay them. You didn't ask them to come in, you aren't in breech of copyright but you still end up having to pay them.
If you consider that to be fair cool who do you work for? I will come and do a security audit without being asked to do so and bill them for my time doing work they didn't request or want.
No the parent has a good point, from my understanding you pay for the BSA to audit you....even if they don't find any copyright infringement you still have to pay for their time and resources in auditing you.
To go back to your examples, that is like the police investigating you finding you innocent and arresting you for wasting police time.
Pretty cool, now if they could just combine that technology with this and heat up the plasma a few thousand degrees.....no one would ever mod me down again for fear of a lightsaber enema.
I did web development for many years, I tried to get out but you end up doing different jobs if they get the slightest clue that you have experience doing web development they start to pull you back into that.
For example, I took a job as a system administrator for a large ecommerce company, they had an emergency one day where some perl cgi scripts broke, the developers were flapping around trying to figure it out, I suggested a solution that worked, from that day one I also had web development tasks, when I finished that job my offical title was: IT Manager/Network Manager/Website Manager.
Second time this happen, unix sys admin for DoD couldn't be further from web development right? Wrong, since being in this job I would estimate about 60% of my time is spent doing tasks related to web development, (I don't mind so much here since the development is very much backend stuff for internal application so less pressure), but it all started because a midlevel manager noticed on my resume when doing some reviews that I had experience in that field.
I swear next job I am omiting all references to web development from my resume.
Slashdot Mirror
I prefer killers kept off the streets also, however, life without parole would be just as effective at keeping killers off the streets.
If you are so death penalty, then I can't wait for the day you are in the wrong place at the wrong time and get wrongly convicted to death from a crime you didn't commit.
As for:
You are shitting me right? If a driver intentionally turned the steering wheel the wrong way it is no longer an accident, it is intentionally causing a wreck and killing someone, hence murder and the person should be tried for murder and sentenced to life without the chance of parole, however, in the event that it is a 'car accident' there is no intention implied. Intention and accident are mutally exclusive.
You are correct that wrongful conviction is the ultimate problem here, however, putting someone in jail for the rest of their life as opposed to killing them, means the innocent person at least has the opportunity to gain some kind of meaningful life and have amends made in the event they their innocence is proved.
Okay so you have personally witnessed every crime that someone has been put to death for? Even in the event that you have, why should I take your word for it? How do I know you don't have a grudge against the person you are testifying against, or worse still that you are in fact a serial killers whos preferred MO is to cause the state to perform your actual murders for you?
Even in the event of video evidence such as a man strangling a woman to death, how to we know this wasn't consentual? way they both got their rocks of and the woman accidently died? The video clearly shows the man killing the woman, however, given consentual circumstances this is death by misadventure or at worst manslaughter, the man didn't intentionally kill the woman therefore the state shouldn't intentially kill the man.
Failing that another situation, you find out your child has been sexually abused by a pervert, you go there to kick the crap out of the man, all that is caught on video is you kicking the guy, you accidently kill him do you deserve to be executed for this crime?
Or how about a real life case, a man, his wife and child are in a car with his friend, the friend has a criminal history, during the trip he shoot a cop dead, he then lies saying the man and woman had commited the murder, they are both sentenced to death, the man is executed, shortly after the actual killer confesses the truth that he had killed the cop, and then kidnapped the man and woman, the woman is released from deathrow but her husband has already been murdered by the state.......but hey there was a witness that saw him kill the cop nevermind the fact that he was lying.
Read all about it yourself
You mean like 'whoops sorry I accidently sent you into an electric chair and pulled the switch, my mistake'
There is no mistake, the person has intentionally been put to death.
No man has the right to determine the fate of another, this includes a murderer and a state.
Actually people with 'normal moral values' do also object to the death penalty. Can you always be 100% certain the person being executed is guilty? Moratoria
NOTE TO SELF USE PREVIEW :op
/etc/cvsup_ports
I use bsd ports on a daily basis, and it is pretty weak, you can specify no X11 with portage:
USE="-X" emerge imagemagick
See nice and easy. Ports is very unstable with patching etc, I shouldn't have to go through:
cvsup -g -L 2
portversion -l " portupgrade -Rra
Which btw usually breaks half the packages in the system, additionally I have to watch out for questions since ports doesn't remember my original install settings, it doesn't take much account for dependencies, on several occasions recently I have patched a freebsd system using ports and found one or more packages are broken after the install, additionally at the end my pkgdb is corrupted and I have to go through the whole process of rebuilding it.
Gentoo is much more simple:
emerge --sync && emerge -uD world
Additionally providing you didn't pass USE during the build it will build according to your original settings.
In my opinion ports is the worst package system out there, even a bsd developer agrees that ports isn't that great, however, whatever floats your boat, opinions are like as*holes everyone has one, personally I like portage, if you prefer ports go with whatever works for you. FreeBSD as an operating system is great, but I would prefer to use portage for bsd as my package manager.
I use bsd ports on a daily basis, and it is pretty weak, you can specify no X11 with portage:
/etc/cvsup_ports
USE="-X" emerge imagemagick
See nice and easy. Ports is very unstable with patching etc, I shouldn't have to go through:
cvsup -g -L 2
portversion -l "that ports isn't that great, however, whatever floats your boat, opinions are like as*holes everyone has one, personally I like portage, if you prefer ports go with whatever works for you. FreeBSD as an operating system is great, but I would prefer to use portage for bsd as my package manager.
Hmmmm okayyyyy so this:
apt-get build-dep foo; apt-get source foo;; munge configure options; fakeroot debian/rules clean binary
Is easier than say:
USE="-perl -jpeg" emerge imagemagick
Besides this was just one example, when it comes to installing your system just the way you want it rather than how your distribution says you should have it, it is just easier with gentoo than anyother distro!
One important disclaimer, this is my preference, I use many distros in my job as much as I love gentoo I wouldn't dream of using it in many situations especially where rock solid stability is important, although I am 'very' experienced with gentoo and I am about 99% confident I can keep it stable in any situation for some tasks I would use debian or even redhat (if the support is a major thing). The wonderful thing about linux is you have these choices, you preference debian for your desktop that is your choice perhaps you even find it easier, but unless you have a point of comparision (ie. you have used gentoo) you really can't judge how useful portage is. I find gentoo to be a lot easier to maintain and get to my very exacting specifications, plus once it is installed and exactly how I like it there is a much bigger sense of achievement.
Yes it is possible to custom compile the options you choose, however, it is a lot easier using portage:
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --no-perl --no-jpeg --enable-png
USE="-perl -jpeg png" emerge imagemagick
Rather than:
make
make test
make install
Then later you want to uninstall if you compiled from source you are up sh*t creek with gentoo:
emerge --unmerge imagemagick
Besides this is just one example when you expand this to hundreds of packages your life becomes a hundred times easier.
Additionally you compile from source you have to manually watch out for updates, patches, etc with your customised packages from portage to upgrade is as simple as:
emerge -uD world
Which will find and upgrade any packages from your world file.
As someone who has used Gentoo for about 4 years, debian for about 5 and before those Suse, I feel I am able to jump in at this point.
Just because you took a look at the install instructions doesn't mean you are able to judge the distro, gentoo is easily the most powerful operating system I have ever encountered, the amount of control it gives you is way beyond anything else out there, seriously better than debian, any bsd, solaris, AIX, hp-ux.
Yes the installation used to be fairly complex (although a great way to learn more about the inner workings of linux), but it has become simplified over the years, and now although I still wouldn't recommend it to a complete newbie, it is ready for a basic user.
Debian with apt cannot compare to portage, and as for features that should be enabled......I disagree, when installing imagemagick I may not want certain features like perl bindings or jpg support, gentoo doesn't just let me add features it also lets me disable them, this in turn reduces clutter on my system and makes life that little bit easier.
Additionally Unfinished Tales, I think both of these books give a better insight of Tolkiens vision of Middle Earth, although they were compiled by Chris Tolkien there are mostly his fathers work in Unfinished Tales Chris adds notes at the end of each story explaining his opinion of how his father intended to continue with this story, generally I agreed with this opinions.
I don't see Chris as a hack, he realised that a huge number of people want to see more of JRR's work and as such he attempts to clean up essays and notes his father left behind and release them, remember JRR originally said there was to be two books released after TLOTR, we can count the Similarion as one, I wouldn't really count Unfinished Tales as one, however, this new book could fit the profile.
If this is the case the GUI is broken in the first place or you haven't used valid syntax when making your changes!
I have been using linux for about 10 years, my main OS is gentoo, I am a Unix systems administrator, I would never consider introducing a windows user to linux through gentoo, or debian they need a gateway distribution, I don't feel fedora fits this bill well enough the same applies to SuSE, however linspire(freespire) are ideal, they get the users used to working in an environment that is similar enough to windows for them to find their way around, when these users want to move onto something more powerful they can change distributions.
As for:
Are you serious?? Linux is linux, yes there is differences between distributions, yes perhaps fedora provides a nice GUI to set up wireless networking and perhaps linspire provides a nice installation method but once the user becomes experienced enough with using Linux they are usually going to learn to bypass the pretty tools anyway and get themselves into the guts of the system, in which case the distribution itself is really just a matter of personal preference.
Once you get to an operating system that attempts to give the user the power to do advanced things in a simple way you find other difficulties and complications. There is no such thing as the perfect operating system for everybody.
I completely agree, when you have someone that introduces himself as ..... 'a certified ethical hacker' right after mentioning his name and job title, you realise right away this person doesn't know shit about security or the processes needed to achieve it. This guy spends 90% of his day attempting to impress people with his 133t hAx0R skills, and amazing ability to write viruses using 'a package downloaded from the internet'.
This really isn't a shocker to me!
I will believe it when I see it, I just got told in no uncertain terms by our site IT security officer that:
"Nessus is unapproved software, we only allow xxxxxx(closed source) security scans to lock down your UNIX servers"
Yes I work for the DoD.
Generally when they show up to perform an audit (unannounced) they bring the police with them and a warrant to search your computers.
Great, so basically microsoft is gonna scare people away from using the update site, so all the pirated copies out there will now be even more insecure since they won't be using patches for fear of getting the GWA software install :o/
I can almost hear the matching of the botnet armies, heading for my firewall, oh and I must remember to buy a couple of 300G hard drives to handle the extra spam on my mail server.
The article says "up to $150,000" I stated up to $150,000 how is there any ambiguity there?
The fact that they can to easily get US Marshalls to support them in a raid in the first place is of concern, in other nations such as Thailand they have the right to conduct raids with no judicial oversight at all, this is a point of concern and the direction the BSA seems to wish to go everywhere.
So because the BSA made the statement that means it isn't something to worry about? If it isn't true and they are saying it is you have a basis of proving the BSA lies, if it is true my original concerns remain. Regardless it is proof that either they have more power than the law allows, or that they lie, you want to trust a group that obviously lies with doing your software audit when they stand to make large sums of money out of it?
Yeah what is it with Americans? If you had of read my previous comment, I am a UK citizen, I am from England. I am making statements about the BSA as a whole not just the UK arm of operations, when people refer to Microsoft do they say microsoft UK or microsoft US? No because it is an organisation as a whole.
I agree that the US legal system is fundamentaly fucked up, however, do a google search and see the rights the BSA has all over the world, yes they have different levels of power in different countries, however, there is one virtual constant, in almost every nation they seem to have a little more power than any similar organisation in that nation.
As I already stated I am making points about the BSA as a whole not just one small part of the organisation because I believe the behaviour of the US wing or the Thai wing of the organisation should reflect the behavour of the company as a whole. In the EU hearing on Microsoft they would bring up points about their American operations are you saying what a company/organisation does in another country is irrelevant? Because I think that is a very naive view, you shouldn't ever look at one small part of a problem you view the problem as a whole!
We are talking about the BSA, in the UK or the US it is still the same organisation so I don't think it is irrelevant. You are right the BSA has no rights to stop a court awarding costs, however, a government does.
If you are such a big supporter of the BSA cool I hope with all my heart you get audited and realise just how corrupt their operation is, I on the other hand completely disagree with every principle the BSA operates under, I am in no way supporting piracy, however, tactics like this sicken me to my stomach, yes people should be careful about their software practises, however, mistakes can be made and as the BSA often points out the burden of proof is the responsibility of the victim, not exactly innocent until proven guilty is it? If they come there and find you are running 50 copies of windows 98SE you still have the licenses and the boxes they came in but you don't have a copy of the original invoice (most companies maintain invoices for 3-5 years) you are pirating the software.....as such they will charge you up to $150,000 for every copy of the software they find.
But since you are such an obvious supporter of theirs I guess this is okay with you.
I am a UK citizen that lives in the US and on both sides of the atlantic I have worked for companies that have recieved threatening letters from the BSA, even although both companies where fully compliant in both cases we had to stop what we were doing and do full software audits to get the BSA to STFU, in the case of the second company we were using totally legal versions of windows XP pro on most workstations but we couldn't find one invoice for 5 of the 200 workstations we had, as such we had to go through the time consuming process of contacting Dell and getting them to trace back through their records to reissue an invoice for us. The BSA are scum and I can't wait for their powers to be dissolved.
Sue them?? You intend to pay their legal fees?
resonable doubt
I can't find the document right now, but basically you agree from the time of an audit you will pay all legal fees incurred by the BSA related to your audit, even if you are found innocent.
Incorrect, rights granted in the US by congress basically state that as soon as the BSA targets your for audit you are responsible for all costs, if they find you guilty even though there is reasonable doubt you have the right to defend yourself, however, you are responsible for the legal fees for the BSA even if you are found innocent. If you are found innocent and don't wish to pay the costs of the investigation guess what you go to court and pay all legal fees.
To my understanding the UK has a similar agreement with the BSA, although you can fight it, it is a case where win or lose you still pay all the legal fees which will usually be higher than the original fine they tried to force upon you.
Now tell me this isn't extortion...
The difference being if you invite them into your office for investigation then yes I agree you should pay, however, in the event a disgruntled employee reports you are using pirated software (when you aren't), they come in with your invitation and investigate you, there is no reason you should have to pay them. You didn't ask them to come in, you aren't in breech of copyright but you still end up having to pay them.
If you consider that to be fair cool who do you work for? I will come and do a security audit without being asked to do so and bill them for my time doing work they didn't request or want.
No the parent has a good point, from my understanding you pay for the BSA to audit you....even if they don't find any copyright infringement you still have to pay for their time and resources in auditing you.
To go back to your examples, that is like the police investigating you finding you innocent and arresting you for wasting police time.
Sounds a lot like organised crime to me.
Pretty cool, now if they could just combine that technology with this and heat up the plasma a few thousand degrees.....no one would ever mod me down again for fear of a lightsaber enema.
I did web development for many years, I tried to get out but you end up doing different jobs if they get the slightest clue that you have experience doing web development they start to pull you back into that.
For example, I took a job as a system administrator for a large ecommerce company, they had an emergency one day where some perl cgi scripts broke, the developers were flapping around trying to figure it out, I suggested a solution that worked, from that day one I also had web development tasks, when I finished that job my offical title was: IT Manager/Network Manager/Website Manager.
Second time this happen, unix sys admin for DoD couldn't be further from web development right? Wrong, since being in this job I would estimate about 60% of my time is spent doing tasks related to web development, (I don't mind so much here since the development is very much backend stuff for internal application so less pressure), but it all started because a midlevel manager noticed on my resume when doing some reviews that I had experience in that field.
I swear next job I am omiting all references to web development from my resume.