My wiring looks like this. And for the exact same reasons: No, we can't have the downtime to move any wiring around, no we can't take the time to pull those old cables, we don't have time/money to order cables, use the wrong length cause that's what's on hand, it needs to be in production today/it's unfunded, for cable management you can use all the zip ties and velcro that you can scrounge, and multiply it all by ten years. And now they want to use it as evidence that the guy is incompetent or even criminal? Because he hasn't had the backing to incur costs and downtimes for neatness? Because he lacked the pull to make them build buildings and buy new infrastructure?
And, knowing that he's getting unfairly accused on these counts makes me mistrust the remaining accusations as well.
God, I wish I had points to mod this up. I've never ever seen it be about skills -- usually, in fact, the people doing the arbitrage don't even *know* what the relative skillsets are.
I'm not going to boycott Sony over this. Not Sony hardware at least. BUT, Sony's not the cheapest on the market. I bought my Sony receiver, and my daughter's Sony camcoder, for example, because I had some degree of TRUST in their products. If they shatter that, and they have, why exactly would I pay a premium for Sony products? I'm far less likely to buy Sony than I was, and it's not because I'm boycotting -- they've simply destroyed part of the value I found in them. Now they're no different from "unnamed manufacturer which I mistrust."
Maybe they could regain some trust from me. If I saw (1) a disavowal of their subsidiary's actions, (2) an unequivocal admission and apology, (3) a couple of executives fired without parachutes, and (4) a lawsuit against First4Internet sufficient to bankrupt them, I might start. But right now, I'm left feeling that Sony thinks they have a PR problem, not that they think they did something deeply wrong.
Because God knows that "younger girl running away from her parent's house with some older guy" was UTTERLY UNHEARD OF in all of human history before the Internet arrived.
Whichever side of the argument you're on, it might be well to remember that copyright has never in human history been recognized as some natural property right: it's an artificial (and arbitrary) grant of privilege by a government. It's given by the votes of politicians, and could be taken away as easily. I imagine that the people screaming "ILLEGAL" the loudest right now would suddenly reverse course and pound on the "morality matters more than law," trope now used by their opponents if the law were more responsive to the will of the governed than the dollars of narrow special interest group.
Yes, well, when PJ is allowed into the White House without proper security checks for weeks on end because of her political affiliations, and when she's hand-picked to pose as a "reporter" so that she can ask softball questions of the president of the United States, her personal details will be a bit more relevant.
Are you pushing the Republican line at every slight opportunity, do you honestly not see the difference, or are you just trolling?
If PJ really is a little old lady who lives modestly, and who's a member of the Jehovah's Witness sect, there's nothing wrong with publishing that. THAT gives insight into a public figure. If the phone number listed in the article was truly obtained from an old news release, then that too would be ethical, if tasteless.
But, public figure or not, publishing people's home addresses is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists. Sarcastic commentary and personally identifying information about about elderly relatives is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists. Mocking their religious choices and age is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists.
Doing so with obvious spite is calculated to increase people's disgust.
I doubt you'll find many highly visible examples of the home addresses, phone numbers, elderly relatives, and religious affliations of the SCOX attorneys being publicized and mocked. People are justified in being angry that PJ has been subjected to that -- just as SCO's attorneys would be justified in thgeir anger if it were done to them.
IIRC, back in the pre-DMCA days, there were several large search sites that specialized in taking the name of an artist (well, of a performer at least) and returning dozens of anonymous FTP sources for.mp3's in the form of hyperlinks. I think that's the mechanism that Ginsburg is referring to. It wasn't as simple as Kazaa, but certainly easier (if less reliable)for Joe User than something like eMule or DirectConnect.
That's the same thought I had -- hell, the "ns.sitefinder.verisign.com" site wouldn't even need to run a real nameserver, just to respond to any query with some address from a pool. Are Spazmania and I just off the beam here, and there's some reason this wouldn't work?
I'm thinking we'll eventually have to see a BIND patch which *both* ignores the A records from the.com tld nameservers *and* allows you to override the answer with NXDOMAIN if the answer matches an IP address in some config file....
Yes, this is the way that they should address copyright infringers, but sad that this won't work in the way that those with a rosy-eyed view of our American legal system would hope.
Even if these people were totally innocent of any civil or criminal wrongdoing (which I doubt) the cost of successfully defending themselves would bankrupt them -- not, of course, that innocence is any guaranteee of victory.
And, if they were in fact guilty of some civil tort, they would face paying for, not the actual damage that they may have caused, but rather huge *statutory* damages.
Great system: Cause some RIAA member $1.25 in damage, and face $1.25 million in costs. Nothing like equal justice under law.
No, let's be clear: IMHO, the issue -- at least in this lawsuit -- is *not* "whether or not SCO's code appears in the Linux kernel." The issue is whether or not they can provce that *IBM* put SCO code into the Linux kernel. If SCO code got into the Linux kernel some other way, they have no case against IBM, at least.
Well, y'know that argument might hold some water if you limited it to software companies.
But suppose I don't work for a software company? Say I work for a company that sells widgets. The software is just a tool to *my* company. I can get it for free, I can improve it where it doesn't meet my satisfaction, and I can give the improved version back to keep the cycle flowing.
My compensation is that on balance I have to hire fewer internal developers, or free them up to to do things that really *must* be custom.
If I sell widgets, and not software, I don't care how many fewer customers there are for a proprietary version of what I got from OSS. I don't sell that. Software is a cost center for me, not a profit center.
Ah, yes, but while at Nullsoft, he was (well, still is for the moment) getting handsomely paid to express himself through code. Open-source hacking may be better for the community, but it don't pay the bills.
Because IBM understands that OSS is the best long-term strategy against a Microsoft-dominated future. I'd much prefer seeing Linux's legal future influenced by a company looking to make money off of hardware, applications and services than by a company trying to make money by selling an OS or by filing infringement suits.
The logic is that if you have kiddie porn, and someone wants to trade their money, goods or services for it, then it has a *market* value. That doesn't imply that it has any societal value, or "right to exist."
I understand that online characters are sold for money, but I wonder what the people who own the servers that those characters were created on get? Don't they have the right, since they paid for the server, to say what people can and can't do with their characters, which are stored on said server?
They get the fees that they charge the people who use the service to build up the character and to play it once it's built. Yes, they do have the right as expressed in their ToS to say what people can and cannot do, but they may often find it more profitable to refrain from enforcing that right.
No, it's not a Sorites paradox. It's either a fallacy of composition, or of converse accident.
You assume that because *some* things you produce have value, *all* things you produce must have value. You neglect the possibility that you could labor many hours to produce something of no value whatsoever.
In fact, your production may *decrease* the value: if you happen to be an incomp[etent builder, a real life house may have no value at all (being condemned by the city as unfit for human habitation) and be worth *less* than the raw materials you yused to produce it.
Emotionally, I'm in sympathy with her, because depp in my heart, I hate these restrictive EULA's. And, in fact, I agree that the companies intentionally make it as difficult as possible to make an informed decision.
As a practical matter, though, the woman certainly knows before she purchases the software that it will come with an EULA that any reasonable person will find objectionable. Further, when it comes to Microsoft, at least, she's dealing with a monopoly, so it's not as if she can shop around.
But more to the point, isn't her real cause of action against the retailer who refuses to take it back?
I don't know that/.'s readers, by and large, think Mitnick is a great hero.
He has a couple of admirable traits: few can doubt his intelligence and tenacity, for example. But he's not really a very admirable person. By his own admission, he's a criminal and a deceiver. By repute (from people other than Markoff) during his criminal days, he was borderline psychotic.
I, for one, don't admire him.
However, the thing is that no one is easier to make excuses for than a bad man whose enemies are worse.
Mitnick got done over by people whose skill at lying, deception and manipulation make him look like a child. They did it with the power of large organizations, or the government itself, behind them, and they did it for personal gain, whether for money or their career.
There's nothing like watching him get up by a bully to make you feel sympathy for a bad kid.
Good point on the reset button though. Sometimes you practically need a pen/pencil to hit some of those. Why?
They're *supposed* to be difficult to hit, so that there are fewer accidental ungraceful resets.
Ah and the turbo button... that's another favorite of mine. I remember I used to have a turbo button on the old 286 that took it from 12 MHz to 16 MHz. What exactly was the point of that? I could turn off turbo if I wanted things to run slower?
Yes, and you might want to if you were playing a rather primitive game where speeding up the CPU made the required reaction times impossibly fast.
I don't think we fall apart yet. They *didn't* post the ingredients, did they?
OTOH, if there was a clear notice during the installation to the effect that "This program will install new.net, which will insert our program code, unsupported by your operating system provider, into the basic way in which your computer communicates to others," then I agree that there was some assumption of risk.
The point is that software installs *aren't* usually that clear, that they obscure facts like that *intentionally* and that it adds up to bad faith and fraud
You're at the supermarket. At one of the tables set up along the aisle, an employee offers a free piece of candy, which you accept. The center is filled with ipecac, and you vomit for the rest of the day.
You're at a concert. You accept a free nerf ball being given away by a radio station. It turns out to contain a miniature microphone which transmits your conversations back to the station's marketing department.
In any other form of human endeavor, would "it's free, whaddaya expect?" justify this sort of deception?
When the software comes clearly labelled "THIS FREE DOWNLOAD WILL INSTALL 2 PIECES OF SPYWARE, CAUSE ADVERTISING POP-UPS TO APPEAR ON YOUR DESKTOP, AND MAY REPLACE AND/OR DAMAGE INTEGRAL COMPONENTS OF YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM," then I'll agree that the person who installs it gets what he deserves. Until then, I say s/he's being damaged by intentional deceit.
Slashdot Mirror
Christ, I want to upmod you.
My wiring looks like this. And for the exact same reasons: No, we can't have the downtime to move any wiring around, no we can't take the time to pull those old cables, we don't have time/money to order cables, use the wrong length cause that's what's on hand, it needs to be in production today/it's unfunded, for cable management you can use all the zip ties and velcro that you can scrounge, and multiply it all by ten years. And now they want to use it as evidence that the guy is incompetent or even criminal? Because he hasn't had the backing to incur costs and downtimes for neatness? Because he lacked the pull to make them build buildings and buy new infrastructure?
And, knowing that he's getting unfairly accused on these counts makes me mistrust the remaining accusations as well.
God, I wish I had points to mod this up. I've never ever seen it be about skills -- usually, in fact, the people doing the arbitrage don't even *know* what the relative skillsets are.
Of course. You have the right to say it. I have the right to recover money damages for the harm you've done me.
I'm not going to boycott Sony over this. Not Sony hardware at least. BUT, Sony's not the cheapest on the market. I bought my Sony receiver, and my daughter's Sony camcoder, for example, because I had some degree of TRUST in their products. If they shatter that, and they have, why exactly would I pay a premium for Sony products? I'm far less likely to buy Sony than I was, and it's not because I'm boycotting -- they've simply destroyed part of the value I found in them. Now they're no different from "unnamed manufacturer which I mistrust."
Maybe they could regain some trust from me. If I saw (1) a disavowal of their subsidiary's actions, (2) an unequivocal admission and apology, (3) a couple of executives fired without parachutes, and (4) a lawsuit against First4Internet sufficient to bankrupt them, I might start. But right now, I'm left feeling that Sony thinks they have a PR problem, not that they think they did something deeply wrong.
Because God knows that "younger girl running away from her parent's house with some older guy" was UTTERLY UNHEARD OF in all of human history before the Internet arrived.
Whichever side of the argument you're on, it might be well to remember that copyright has never in human history been recognized as some natural property right: it's an artificial (and arbitrary) grant of privilege by a government. It's given by the votes of politicians, and could be taken away as easily. I imagine that the people screaming "ILLEGAL" the loudest right now would suddenly reverse course and pound on the "morality matters more than law," trope now used by their opponents if the law were more responsive to the will of the governed than the dollars of narrow special interest group.
It *is* like whack-a-mole, isn't it?
Anyway, I thought the algorithm of the moment was "If it's popular, torrent it, use emule if it's rare (and be prepared for it to take forever.)'
Yes, well, when PJ is allowed into the White House without proper security checks for weeks on end because of her political affiliations, and when she's hand-picked to pose as a "reporter" so that she can ask softball questions of the president of the United States, her personal details will be a bit more relevant.
Are you pushing the Republican line at every slight opportunity, do you honestly not see the difference, or are you just trolling?
If PJ really is a little old lady who lives modestly, and who's a member of the Jehovah's Witness sect, there's nothing wrong with publishing that. THAT gives insight into a public figure. If the phone number listed in the article was truly obtained from an old news release, then that too would be ethical, if tasteless.
But, public figure or not, publishing people's home addresses is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists. Sarcastic commentary and personally identifying information about about elderly relatives is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists. Mocking their religious choices and age is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists.
Doing so with obvious spite is calculated to increase people's disgust.
I doubt you'll find many highly visible examples of the home addresses, phone numbers, elderly relatives, and religious affliations of the SCOX attorneys being publicized and mocked. People are justified in being angry that PJ has been subjected to that -- just as SCO's attorneys would be justified in thgeir anger if it were done to them.
"Is the fact that the buttons render 15 pixels apart instead of 14 going to break the software when it goes out to market?"
Ever read Ellen Ullman's _The Bug_ ?
IIRC, back in the pre-DMCA days, there were several large search sites that specialized in taking the name of an artist (well, of a performer at least) and returning dozens of anonymous FTP sources for .mp3's in the form of hyperlinks. I think that's the mechanism that Ginsburg is referring to. It wasn't as simple as Kazaa, but certainly easier (if less reliable)for Joe User than something like eMule or DirectConnect.
That's the same thought I had -- hell, the "ns.sitefinder.verisign.com" site wouldn't even need to run a real nameserver, just to respond to any query with some address from a pool. Are Spazmania and I just off the beam here, and there's some reason this wouldn't work?
.com tld nameservers *and* allows you to override the answer with NXDOMAIN if the answer matches an IP address in some config file....
I'm thinking we'll eventually have to see a BIND patch which *both* ignores the A records from the
Yes, this is the way that they should address copyright infringers, but sad that this won't work in the way that those with a rosy-eyed view of our American legal system would hope.
Even if these people were totally innocent of any civil or criminal wrongdoing (which I doubt) the cost of successfully defending themselves would bankrupt them -- not, of course, that innocence is any guaranteee of victory.
And, if they were in fact guilty of some civil tort, they would face paying for, not the actual damage that they may have caused, but rather huge *statutory* damages.
Great system: Cause some RIAA member $1.25 in damage, and face $1.25 million in costs. Nothing like equal justice under law.
No, let's be clear: IMHO, the issue -- at least in this lawsuit -- is *not* "whether or not SCO's code appears in the Linux kernel." The issue is whether or not they can provce that *IBM* put SCO code into the Linux kernel. If SCO code got into the Linux kernel some other way, they have no case against IBM, at least.
Well, y'know that argument might hold some water if you limited it to software companies.
But suppose I don't work for a software company? Say I work for a company that sells widgets. The software is just a tool to *my* company. I can get it for free, I can improve it where it doesn't meet my satisfaction, and I can give the improved version back to keep the cycle flowing.
My compensation is that on balance I have to hire fewer internal developers, or free them up to to do things that really *must* be custom.
If I sell widgets, and not software, I don't care how many fewer customers there are for a proprietary version of what I got from OSS. I don't sell that. Software is a cost center for me, not a profit center.
Ah, yes, but while at Nullsoft, he was (well, still is for the moment) getting handsomely paid to express himself through code. Open-source hacking may be better for the community, but it don't pay the bills.
Given that choice, then IBM.
Because IBM understands that OSS is the best long-term strategy against a Microsoft-dominated future. I'd much prefer seeing Linux's legal future influenced by a company looking to make money off of hardware, applications and services than by a company trying to make money by selling an OS or by filing infringement suits.
Wouldn't you?
They get the fees that they charge the people who use the service to build up the character and to play it once it's built. Yes, they do have the right as expressed in their ToS to say what people can and cannot do, but they may often find it more profitable to refrain from enforcing that right.
Apologies -- even *I* usually type better than that, but it won't let me fix it at this point
No, it's not a Sorites paradox. It's either a fallacy of composition, or of converse accident.
You assume that because *some* things you produce have value, *all* things you produce must have value. You neglect the possibility that you could labor many hours to produce something of no value whatsoever.
In fact, your production may *decrease* the value: if you happen to be an incomp[etent builder, a real life house may have no value at all (being condemned by the city as unfit for human habitation) and be worth *less* than the raw materials you yused to produce it.
Emotionally, I'm in sympathy with her, because depp in my heart, I hate these restrictive EULA's. And, in fact, I agree that the companies intentionally make it as difficult as possible to make an informed decision.
As a practical matter, though, the woman certainly knows before she purchases the software that it will come with an EULA that any reasonable person will find objectionable. Further, when it comes to Microsoft, at least, she's dealing with a monopoly, so it's not as if she can shop around.
But more to the point, isn't her real cause of action against the retailer who refuses to take it back?
I don't know that /.'s readers, by and large, think Mitnick is a great hero.
He has a couple of admirable traits: few can doubt his intelligence and tenacity, for example. But he's not really a very admirable person. By his own admission, he's a criminal and a deceiver. By repute (from people other than Markoff) during his criminal days, he was borderline psychotic.
I, for one, don't admire him.
However, the thing is that no one is easier to make excuses for than a bad man whose enemies are worse.
Mitnick got done over by people whose skill at lying, deception and manipulation make him look like a child. They did it with the power of large organizations, or the government itself, behind them, and they did it for personal gain, whether for money or their career.
There's nothing like watching him get up by a bully to make you feel sympathy for a bad kid.
Assuming that the questions are serious:
Good point on the reset button though. Sometimes you practically need a pen/pencil to hit some of those. Why?
They're *supposed* to be difficult to hit, so that there are fewer accidental ungraceful resets.
Ah and the turbo button... that's another favorite of mine. I remember I used to have a turbo button on the old 286 that took it from 12 MHz to 16 MHz. What exactly was the point of that? I could turn off turbo if I wanted things to run slower?
Yes, and you might want to if you were playing a rather primitive game where speeding up the CPU made the required reaction times impossibly fast.
I don't think we fall apart yet. They *didn't* post the ingredients, did they?
OTOH, if there was a clear notice during the installation to the effect that "This program will install new.net, which will insert our program code, unsupported by your operating system provider, into the basic way in which your computer communicates to others," then I agree that there was some assumption of risk.
The point is that software installs *aren't* usually that clear, that they obscure facts like that *intentionally* and that it adds up to bad faith and fraud
Oh, come now. Let us draw an analogy or two:
You're at the supermarket. At one of the tables set up along the aisle, an employee offers a free piece of candy, which you accept. The center is filled with ipecac, and you vomit for the rest of the day.
You're at a concert. You accept a free nerf ball being given away by a radio station. It turns out to contain a miniature microphone which transmits your conversations back to the station's marketing department.
In any other form of human endeavor, would "it's free, whaddaya expect?" justify this sort of deception?
When the software comes clearly labelled "THIS FREE DOWNLOAD WILL INSTALL 2 PIECES OF SPYWARE, CAUSE ADVERTISING POP-UPS TO APPEAR ON YOUR DESKTOP, AND MAY REPLACE AND/OR DAMAGE INTEGRAL COMPONENTS OF YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM," then I'll agree that the person who installs it gets what he deserves. Until then, I say s/he's being damaged by intentional deceit.