I would say, in fact, that this is one of the most solid copyright-contesting cases to come along in a while.
That's as maybe, but it does nothing if it doesn't force Diebold to change the way they develop their voting machines. THAT takes some outrage on the part of the public, as generated by the press, and I have yet to see any of that, save by a few hundred slashdotters.
Perhaps if someone would mail copies of these materials to every Congressman/woman (Democrats would be more interested in this than Republicans, I think, since Diebold is pretty clearly a Republican company), every City Council, Mayor, or any other elected official without a lot of histrionics, THEN it might achieve something.
While the EFF is pretty good at affecting the electronically-involved world, until someone makes Ma and Pa Walmart understand that Diebold is trying to f***them hardcore, it won't do much good. Even then, I wouldn't hold my breath.
The fact remains that this is political favoritism on the part of a corporation
Corporate political favoritism occurs all the time. We allow corporations to make contributions to political candidates who agree with their views or to "convince" them to agree with their views. Now a corporation is playing favorites in a way that does not agree with your views, but that does not necessarily make it wrong.
All citizens of the United States are at the very least entitled to an opinion about the governing of our country as are corporations. Deal with it - maybe you won't buy Symantec in the future, but they will still have that right regardless.
For the same reason that no one will ever carry through on my plans to
a) enslave hackers and virus writers until they pay back the FULL amount of their economic damages
or
b) summarily execute them in a gruesome and tortuous manner
It this whole "respect for human life" that keeps us all bound up with arcane rules about how we should value even the smallest living thing.
Oh well. One day when our robot overlord masters descend from the skies, I will welcome them and then point them in the direction of everyone who is even the slightest bit annoying and hope that they will take care of the problem.
NOTICE FOR THE HUMOR IMPAIRED: I'm kidding. Badly written, perhaps, but kidding.
don't have a great grasp of the intricacies of the GPL (and didn't run this by their IP lawyers which I suspect they don't have
Thus the reason, as a small operator, that I would never even consider GPL'd software or code when trying to create a product that would (hopefully) return revenue.
To my mind, the only acceptable licenses are either completely proprietary (no code released) or the type that give it away with no strings attached and no responsibility after the release (Artistic, Public Domain, etc.).
There's way too much religious baggage associated with the GPL and until we have a definitive court ruling, two or three years from now (maybe), the validity of the GPL will open to question.
Considering the times we live in now, where every little asshat is trying to get into your computer by any means possible, sometimes for no better reason than because they can, it is probably best to remove the old code that may be exploited.
At least until they make hacking punishable by instant death.
At the end of the day, it will still take 1 unix admin to do the work of 10 windows admins.
And that's 10 employed people and one out of work schlub, vs. 1 employed schlub and 10 unemployed IT workers. Say what you want about quality of work, etc., but the government isn't exactly leaping to the defense of the IT world these days and we need whatever breaks we can make or get.
Sorry. Haven't had any caffeine yet and I'm feeling evil - whiny, and evil. Definitely evil, perhaps not so whiny.
However if the game itself aka "the original media" is no longer commercially available as in the case of most Atari, Coleco, and early Nintendo it could be considered abandoned, therby allowed under this exception.
Not as I read it - the requirement is that the hardware necessary to access the code is no longer available. But you would still have to own a legal copy, say from your discount computer store. If you own the cartridge, then you could access the code with an emulator perhaps, but it doesn't appear to allow you (hypothetically, because no one at/. would EVER do this) download a copy of the ROM and play it with an emulator.
In the case of 5 1/4" disks, if the drive is no longer manufactured to access the media, then you would be able to use a surplus drive, again obtained from your local discount store, to access the media, and *maybe* it would be legal to break and copy to another, more easily accessible form, but that's a pretty tricky conclusion and one that lawyers with a beef would be best left to decide.
Relevant section quoted below:
Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
Instead of trying to condition people's behavior by establishing punishments for bad behavior, how about giving people a solid foundation for ethical behavior?
That works for the big things like murder and theft, which are universally condoned by ethical standards bodies (religions, etc.), but it doesn't work so well for smaller stuff like speeding.
It's easy to point to the Ten Commandments as proof for the portion of the population that believes in those things, but what about the remainder? There isn't a commandment against speeding and simply saying something is wrong does not make it so, nor does saying something is right make it so either.
I agree that establishing a solid ethical foundation is important, but on what do we base it?
By the way, even if everyone else is speeding, it is still wrong, IMHO. Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn't make it right. But we all have to be somewhat pragmatic. I doubt seriously you'll spend any time in Hell (or wherever - Cowboy Neal's doghouse, perhaps) for speeding. Maybe Saint Peter will just issue you a ticket and look at you funny.
Completely overlooking the fact that the response is to alter a system that is not under your control without the owner's permission. You can block at the router if you want, thereby denying traffic from the host, but I would argue that making alterations to another's system without permission is exactly as unethical (and probably illegal, depending on jurisdiction) as the original worm.
OK, completely ignoring the fact that the Enterprise is completely fictional, etc., etc., they still didn't get the test right.
The shape of the warp bubble is what's important, not the shape of the ship. While the bubble follows the general shape of the ship, it does not conform to the outer hull in the way that the test represents.
OK, enough of that. Back to arguing about how a transporter works.
Perhaps it's time to get college radio to be independent of RIAA and start playing actual college bands. Let regular radio broadcast the big dollar bands, and have college radio broadcast someone who's actually from their demographic.
Sorry, that's sounds harsher than I mean it to, but I thought the point of college radio was first to provide a venue for potential DJ's to practice their on-air skills and second as a venue for student enjoyment.
The best thing to do would be to kick the RIAA representative straight out of the studio. There's about a million bands out there looking for airplay, that aren't signed with RIAA companies, who probably better match the students' needs.
It's wierd to me that college radio is not more independent of studios, but then I'm old and idealistic...
Yeah, but take a look around you... see any Mayans? 'Course they got descendants, can't hardly spin a cat 'round by it's tail without hittin' a descendant of some kind or another. And all them descendant's... they gots wheels. But the Mayans, smart as they was, didn't have no wheels and they ain't no more of 'em today. So, I think it's pretty dang self-evident that the wheel is necessary.
Wow, I see the doctor gave you an extra supply of asshole pills. I was sincerely unaware that there were non-GNU system utils out there SINCE NO ONE EVER FREAKIN' MENTIONS THEM! So stuff your snotty attitude back up your ass where you pulled it out from and try some decaf once in a while, shithead.
I've got my nail with a club stuck on it all ready to go. Now if I can just figure out how to make fire. And some of those round, rolling things... uh, wheels, yeah.
No, I fully understand that. It's human nature. That's what you have to have marketing for, to get around the human tendency to stick with what's familiar and known - to get them to consider alternatives.
That's the main failure of Open Source - some great ideas but a lousy job selling it.
Two years after that, a politician will decide that the fairest way to allocate highway-maintenance taxes is based on actual road usage, and every mile you drive will be tolled.
I actually agree with that. Those who use or value a service the most should pay the lion's share of the fees for the maintenance of that service.
Oddly enough, a really good word processor for the Mac platform is made by an Israeli company. If you own a Mac, do yourself a favor and check out Mellel. It has full Hebrew support (which I don't need). I've used it some and it does what it's supposed to do.
The key thing it doesn't do: work with Microsoft documents. Oh, yeah, and you can forget typing in equations and whatnot (but how many people in the real world really need to do that?).
Microsoft is not the only source of your problems with public acceptance. By it's nature, Microsoft is able to present a united front aligned behind a small grouping of products, which Linux advocates are not able to do. It's like watching a Libertarian political convention. All the things you're saying make sense on level, but because everyone is saying slightly different things and trying to out-yell the others, no one can get a clear message. The only way to survive in a market-driven economy is to recognize a need or create a need, and then sell the living hell out a product to meet that need. The public wants reassurances that the product will at least meet some of that need, but most of them don't understand the technical jargon.
This problem goes way beyond any actions that Microsoft has done. It's a matter of human psychology - better the devil you know rather than the one you don't know.
that's a sign that the ill effects of monopoly power are at play
And that the competition has no marketing ability. Not to harsh on your mellow or anything, but do you really believe technical superiority is what wins over the masses? Drop a billion or so per year on marketing and then see how your favorite browser does in terms of marketshare (or any software for that matter).
It is not enough to tout the technical advantage. You have to have someone who can translate into simple terms so Ma and Pa Walmart can understand that. Advertising is not about telling the truth, per se, but rather about making things look good regardless of any other factors. That's what Microsoft excels at (well, that and backroom deals).
The point of all this is: Microsoft may be a monopoly, and they may wield that power ham-handedly, but the competition let them get their by making assumptions that weren't true, namely that technical ability would actually mean more than it does to the public.
has a lot of useless overhead in it because it is just a recompilation of a desktop server
Perhaps if someone would release a similar slimmed-down version for desktops, then people would quit bitching about it. Seriously, for a single home-use desktop, how much of the extra stuff is absolutely necessary?
Slashdot Mirror
I would say, in fact, that this is one of the most solid copyright-contesting cases to come along in a while.
That's as maybe, but it does nothing if it doesn't force Diebold to change the way they develop their voting machines. THAT takes some outrage on the part of the public, as generated by the press, and I have yet to see any of that, save by a few hundred slashdotters.
Perhaps if someone would mail copies of these materials to every Congressman/woman (Democrats would be more interested in this than Republicans, I think, since Diebold is pretty clearly a Republican company), every City Council, Mayor, or any other elected official without a lot of histrionics, THEN it might achieve something.
While the EFF is pretty good at affecting the electronically-involved world, until someone makes Ma and Pa Walmart understand that Diebold is trying to f***them hardcore, it won't do much good. Even then, I wouldn't hold my breath.
The fact remains that this is political favoritism on the part of a corporation
Corporate political favoritism occurs all the time. We allow corporations to make contributions to political candidates who agree with their views or to "convince" them to agree with their views. Now a corporation is playing favorites in a way that does not agree with your views, but that does not necessarily make it wrong.
All citizens of the United States are at the very least entitled to an opinion about the governing of our country as are corporations. Deal with it - maybe you won't buy Symantec in the future, but they will still have that right regardless.
For the same reason that no one will ever carry through on my plans to
a) enslave hackers and virus writers until they pay back the FULL amount of their economic damages
or
b) summarily execute them in a gruesome and tortuous manner
It this whole "respect for human life" that keeps us all bound up with arcane rules about how we should value even the smallest living thing.
Oh well. One day when our robot overlord masters descend from the skies, I will welcome them and then point them in the direction of everyone who is even the slightest bit annoying and hope that they will take care of the problem.
NOTICE FOR THE HUMOR IMPAIRED: I'm kidding. Badly written, perhaps, but kidding.
don't have a great grasp of the intricacies of the GPL (and didn't run this by their IP lawyers which I suspect they don't have
Thus the reason, as a small operator, that I would never even consider GPL'd software or code when trying to create a product that would (hopefully) return revenue.
To my mind, the only acceptable licenses are either completely proprietary (no code released) or the type that give it away with no strings attached and no responsibility after the release (Artistic, Public Domain, etc.).
There's way too much religious baggage associated with the GPL and until we have a definitive court ruling, two or three years from now (maybe), the validity of the GPL will open to question.
Considering the times we live in now, where every little asshat is trying to get into your computer by any means possible, sometimes for no better reason than because they can, it is probably best to remove the old code that may be exploited.
At least until they make hacking punishable by instant death.
("piracy" is, of course, bad, but thuggery is worse).
Piracy is illegal. Thuggery is not. Both are bad, but one is legal.
At the end of the day, it will still take 1 unix admin to do the work of 10 windows admins.
And that's 10 employed people and one out of work schlub, vs. 1 employed schlub and 10 unemployed IT workers. Say what you want about quality of work, etc., but the government isn't exactly leaping to the defense of the IT world these days and we need whatever breaks we can make or get.
Sorry. Haven't had any caffeine yet and I'm feeling evil - whiny, and evil. Definitely evil, perhaps not so whiny.
You had a HARD DRIVE? I guess you were one of the lucky ones - some of us just had two floppy drives!
However if the game itself aka "the original media" is no longer commercially available as in the case of most Atari, Coleco, and early Nintendo it could be considered abandoned, therby allowed under this exception.
/. would EVER do this) download a copy of the ROM and play it with an emulator.
Not as I read it - the requirement is that the hardware necessary to access the code is no longer available. But you would still have to own a legal copy, say from your discount computer store. If you own the cartridge, then you could access the code with an emulator perhaps, but it doesn't appear to allow you (hypothetically, because no one at
In the case of 5 1/4" disks, if the drive is no longer manufactured to access the media, then you would be able to use a surplus drive, again obtained from your local discount store, to access the media, and *maybe* it would be legal to break and copy to another, more easily accessible form, but that's a pretty tricky conclusion and one that lawyers with a beef would be best left to decide.
Relevant section quoted below:
Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
Instead of trying to condition people's behavior by establishing punishments for bad behavior, how about giving people a solid foundation for ethical behavior?
That works for the big things like murder and theft, which are universally condoned by ethical standards bodies (religions, etc.), but it doesn't work so well for smaller stuff like speeding.
It's easy to point to the Ten Commandments as proof for the portion of the population that believes in those things, but what about the remainder? There isn't a commandment against speeding and simply saying something is wrong does not make it so, nor does saying something is right make it so either.
I agree that establishing a solid ethical foundation is important, but on what do we base it?
By the way, even if everyone else is speeding, it is still wrong, IMHO. Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn't make it right. But we all have to be somewhat pragmatic. I doubt seriously you'll spend any time in Hell (or wherever - Cowboy Neal's doghouse, perhaps) for speeding. Maybe Saint Peter will just issue you a ticket and look at you funny.
Seems somewhat resonable[sic] to me.
Completely overlooking the fact that the response is to alter a system that is not under your control without the owner's permission. You can block at the router if you want, thereby denying traffic from the host, but I would argue that making alterations to another's system without permission is exactly as unethical (and probably illegal, depending on jurisdiction) as the original worm.
OK, completely ignoring the fact that the Enterprise is completely fictional, etc., etc., they still didn't get the test right.
The shape of the warp bubble is what's important, not the shape of the ship. While the bubble follows the general shape of the ship, it does not conform to the outer hull in the way that the test represents.
OK, enough of that. Back to arguing about how a transporter works.
Oh, come now, your faith in humanity is horribly misplaced.
Why are these devices not illegal?
Just because something is illegal does not mean that it will stop anyone.
Once people know that they will be fined, they will stop using it.
Doesn't work for speeding, does it?
The cat is unfortunately out of the bag and it's trying to bite our heads off just like that performer in Las Vegas.
Perhaps it's time to get college radio to be independent of RIAA and start playing actual college bands. Let regular radio broadcast the big dollar bands, and have college radio broadcast someone who's actually from their demographic.
...
Sorry, that's sounds harsher than I mean it to, but I thought the point of college radio was first to provide a venue for potential DJ's to practice their on-air skills and second as a venue for student enjoyment.
The best thing to do would be to kick the RIAA representative straight out of the studio. There's about a million bands out there looking for airplay, that aren't signed with RIAA companies, who probably better match the students' needs.
It's wierd to me that college radio is not more independent of studios, but then I'm old and idealistic
Yeah, but take a look around you ... see any Mayans? 'Course they got descendants, can't hardly spin a cat 'round by it's tail without hittin' a descendant of some kind or another. And all them descendant's ... they gots wheels. But the Mayans, smart as they was, didn't have no wheels and they ain't no more of 'em today. So, I think it's pretty dang self-evident that the wheel is necessary.
Can't argue with logic like that, now, can ya?
Wow, I see the doctor gave you an extra supply of asshole pills. I was sincerely unaware that there were non-GNU system utils out there SINCE NO ONE EVER FREAKIN' MENTIONS THEM! So stuff your snotty attitude back up your ass where you pulled it out from and try some decaf once in a while, shithead.
I've got my nail with a club stuck on it all ready to go. Now if I can just figure out how to make fire. And some of those round, rolling things ... uh, wheels, yeah.
Be interesting if anyone ever starts a project to create fully BSD-licensed versions of the standard unix utilities and shells.
Not that it would happen, but at least Stallman would have less to gripe about.
No, I fully understand that. It's human nature. That's what you have to have marketing for, to get around the human tendency to stick with what's familiar and known - to get them to consider alternatives.
That's the main failure of Open Source - some great ideas but a lousy job selling it.
Two years after that, a politician will decide that the fairest way to allocate highway-maintenance taxes is based on actual road usage, and every mile you drive will be tolled.
I actually agree with that. Those who use or value a service the most should pay the lion's share of the fees for the maintenance of that service.
Oddly enough, a really good word processor for the Mac platform is made by an Israeli company. If you own a Mac, do yourself a favor and check out Mellel. It has full Hebrew support (which I don't need). I've used it some and it does what it's supposed to do.
The key thing it doesn't do: work with Microsoft documents. Oh, yeah, and you can forget typing in equations and whatnot (but how many people in the real world really need to do that?).
because I learned true joy when something more powerful than the C64 came out.
Microsoft is not the only source of your problems with public acceptance. By it's nature, Microsoft is able to present a united front aligned behind a small grouping of products, which Linux advocates are not able to do. It's like watching a Libertarian political convention. All the things you're saying make sense on level, but because everyone is saying slightly different things and trying to out-yell the others, no one can get a clear message. The only way to survive in a market-driven economy is to recognize a need or create a need, and then sell the living hell out a product to meet that need. The public wants reassurances that the product will at least meet some of that need, but most of them don't understand the technical jargon.
This problem goes way beyond any actions that Microsoft has done. It's a matter of human psychology - better the devil you know rather than the one you don't know.
that's a sign that the ill effects of monopoly power are at play
And that the competition has no marketing ability. Not to harsh on your mellow or anything, but do you really believe technical superiority is what wins over the masses? Drop a billion or so per year on marketing and then see how your favorite browser does in terms of marketshare (or any software for that matter).
It is not enough to tout the technical advantage. You have to have someone who can translate into simple terms so Ma and Pa Walmart can understand that. Advertising is not about telling the truth, per se, but rather about making things look good regardless of any other factors. That's what Microsoft excels at (well, that and backroom deals).
The point of all this is: Microsoft may be a monopoly, and they may wield that power ham-handedly, but the competition let them get their by making assumptions that weren't true, namely that technical ability would actually mean more than it does to the public.
has a lot of useless overhead in it because it is just a recompilation of a desktop server
Perhaps if someone would release a similar slimmed-down version for desktops, then people would quit bitching about it. Seriously, for a single home-use desktop, how much of the extra stuff is absolutely necessary?