Does anyone have the actual brief? I didnt see it linked to from the article. Openlaw's DVD amicus curie brief was posted. Someone should post the actual brief.
This has been consistently eroded over the last 35-40 years.
Much Longer than that! The U.S. is a common law country and like in other common law countries (e.g., Great Brittan) our legal system is filled with two types of "law." These are common law and statutory law. Statutory law is given by the legelature and common law is given my the judicial system. If you've been following this case at all the DMCA is statutory while Summers vs. Tice is common law. Most of our legal system, including contract and tort law, is derived from English Common Law. The Constitution not only allows but requires this.
As for your bullet points...
You can never know in advance whether something you are going to do is illegal...you could link
to an illegal site--a perfectly legal action at the time--but be held responsible later. This is a
violation of ex post facto.
Nobdy would ever have any clue as to whether they were breaking a law unless judges were able to interpret laws. If you don't like a judge's interpretation you can appeal it. This is why, in a criminal trial, we have a judge to interpret the law and a jury to interpret the facts. The Constitution says "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."(I.9.) A law is not an ex post facto law just because the judge decides whether or not you violated it after you violated it.
Rather than being decided by an elected legislative body, the law of the land is decided arbitrarily
by single judges.
Well some judges are elected but you're right that for the most part higher up state and federal judges are not. I think most if not all judges would argue that their decisions are anything but arbitrary. You can appeal a judges decision so that these important legal decisions are not made by a "single" judge. If you don't like how judges are apointed then elect someone president who will put in judges that you like or write your congress(wo)man and say that you want an ammendment to the constitution passed which allows us to elect all judges. However I don't see the current system as being that bad. If you don't like that the court can make interpretive rulings like Mirranda or that a state can't succeed to escape a federal excise tax then you are entitled to your opinions.
Rulings may be inconsistent depending on a particular judge's opinion. It is a roll of dice
whether something you do is going to be considered legal at one moment, and illegal at some
other time.
That is exactly why you can appeal. Once the surpreme court rules on something it applies everywhere in the U.S.
I dont see what the difference is between TiVo and a VCR. They both allow time shifting. The TiVo allows realtime time shifting. So what? How is this thing supposed to infrenge on the network's copyrights? The networks are just upset that people might skip the commercials. A Tivo is an article of commerce with substancial non-infrenging uses(like the VCR). Therefore, unlike napster, The networks cannot enjoin the technology.
This is a civil trial right? How can one company legaly force another company to cease comerce without a trial? Even if napster is found not liable, they will have suffered damages due to the law suit. Don't they teach us in school that this kind of thing doesn't happen in America?
A state cannot tax mail order from another state. They cannot tax or even regulate a transaction that happens across state lines (i.e., niehter state can). Any state law that does this or attempts to do this is UNCONSTITUTIONAL! The Constitution states that Congress shall have the sole power to regulate interstate commerse. There have been numerous supreme court cases to establish the precident that a transaction which crosses state lines cannot be regulated or taxed by either state. That is a power reserved for the federal government.
This program does not write music. It performs music. For TV they still hire a composer to write the music but they don't need to hire musicians to play it and record it. So no, whoever asked, they can't just play a track off a CD. Also this is different from the program that could compose in a composer's style. This can perform a piece with emmotion. It adds accents and vibratto the way a human player would.
I find it annoying that people post responces like "I don't believe it. A computer can't do x." When the article said that this new computer program can do y. Slashdot has been invaded by the posters on Amazon that say "Well I havn't read the book but this is what I think..."
Just a request... before you flame me or moderate me down read the article and read some of the potings on this story.
I would defninitly like to see some of that USB code. Does anyone know of anything like the Aero 8000 that runs linux well. I could realy use a thin client laptop that I can use around campus and run porgrams remotely.
I've been running linnux on my dell Lattitude since Febuary. My big problem with the instalation was waiting for the specs on the NeoMagic chipset to be released. For those of you who don't know NeoMagic made the first single chip graphics card and they did not want to release any specs for fear of loosing their trade secrets.
My biggest complaint with the whole thing was the reaction I got from the rest of the linux community. Often when I told people that there was no driver I was told to write one. But, when I explained that the specs hadn't been released a few people told me (they were actualy serious) to reverse engineer the chip in a cleen-room. I don't know how many of you have cleen-rooms around but I sure don't have one set up in my living room if you know what I mean. Nor do I have the time to reverse engineer a graphics card on a single chip.
Eventualy a driver was released and I thank all those who contributed to it. However, I still am troubled by the way non-laptop linux users don't support their fellow linux users in dealing with laptop OEMs and the OEMs' suppliers.
Which brings me to my seccond point: It's not just laptops!! Linux always lags behind other OSs in hardware support. Usualy this is due to some manufacturer not supplying drivers or worse still not releasing any information about the hardware. But other times it's just because we are slow. USB is a perfect example. The specifications are all open yet there's no linux drivers for USB stuff.
One of the great selling points of the open development model is that it can addapt quickly (e.g. IPv6) but it always seems to lag in hardware support.
I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure that BattleNet does not host the games. BattleNet simply provides a media by which to set up games which are then run over TCP/IP sockets between the computers in the game. That's why you can loose your connection to battlenet and continue playing the game. This used to happen to me when I played really long games last spring. You should upgrade your internet connection.
Every time MS senses a competitve edge they go against industry standards. Take COM for instance. MS knows that once they can get into a market they can bundle that product to the OS and effectivly stamp out competition. Soon we'll get MSNmesenger on our new computers when we buy them. It make sense for MS to create a standard. Once a standard has been integrated into windows MS can change it and the rest of the industry is forced to comply. If, 3 years later, MS desides to change to a proprietary standard they can. That way only MS clients will work on anyones server.
It's like MS Java. Someone had a great idea and MS decides to steal it. Once they have a market share they can eliminate all competition. Even if they have to take a loss to do it. This is a clear example of MS's attitude that every computer in the world should be running *only* MS software.
Do you think that the intent of this bill makes it any less of a privacy violation*? How bout this*? Random car and house searches are ok b/c they are looking for drugs and drugs are bad. So It's ok if 20 or so DEA guys come in and trash your house looking for drugs. Do you think that any senator is going to say they are doing something to eliminate privacy*? Of course they want to fight some alement to society. I just think they can do so without restricting my rights any.
This is basicly what you are saying. Oh sure, it's ok. This isn't a privacy issue because they are looking for illegal imagrents. But why stop there at national ID cards*? How about Global ID cards*? Or do you like that idea too*?
The whole thing sounds pretty shady to me. This is still a few steps form the Nazi *"Stop*! Papers please.*" But, we are getting closer.
Crime is a cancer to society and like cancer the symptoms of the treatment for crime seem to be getting worse than the symptoms of the crime itself.
I've seen many postings on both sides of an apperent debate. Some people claim that this is some kind of underhanded move by the people at etrade. Others would sugest that this shows how RedHat cares about its customers. One person likened it to RedHat throwing money in our faces. I say to all of you, "Calm It!"
Now, a few things. First the way IPO's work is like this. The portion of the company to be sold publicly is given to one main (in this case two) brokers. They in turn sell the stock at a price determined jointly by the broker, the company, and to some extend SEC rules. The borkers sell a portion to "friends and family" of the company having the IPO, a portion to the brokers customers, and a large part to other brokers. The other brokers sell some to their customers and put some into mutual funds etc. It is the small portion that goes to the brokers customers that apears to be in dispute.
It is not uncommon for this to be mostly sold to the winners of a lottery; however, some of this stock can be given to people in the industry. In the case of RedHat there just hapens to be a lot of people in the industry.
Yes, ETrade can require you to have an acount (they sell it to their customers remember). This creates competion and is why everyone wants to sponsor IPOs.
I can't find the book that gives the exact equation but I seem to remember reading that a black hole with an event horizon the size of one neutron would have a mass of about one hundred million tons. Now excuse the crudity of this next step but a million tons is about 1 billion killograms so 100M tons is 10^11 kg. Now, from High school physics: F = G (m_1 * m_2)/(r^2) so if m_1 is the black hole and m_2 is a 220 pound (100kg)person then: F = (6.67e-11)(1e11*100)/(r^2) F = 667/(r^2) Now this means that a person at one meter from the point of colision would feel a force of 667 Newtons -- about 130 pounds
That is not a whole lot; however, there is a catch. As the size of a black whole increases (by size I mean the radius at which the escape velocity is equal to the speed of light) the density increases. This means that one of a radius of say an atom 1000 times the radius 1 billion times the volume could be 1 trillion times the mass. In other words, New York is gone. D.C. is gone. Philly is gone. Chicago, Boston, Miami, and maybe Houston are all gone. It probably wont destroy the earth but man made structures would have a problem. How much nearly sideways force can a building take? I don't know. Thats not my area of specialty and I encurage information from people who do know. But remember, the force is directly related to the mass and I do know that buildings are pretty heavy.
Please any one who knows the mass of buildings or the amount of side force they can take please reply. Also if anyone can find the actual equation for the mass a black hole please post it. Probably (hopefully) it wont happen but it's still a fun exersise to figure the damage.
No. Intel would lower the price on chips so that to be competitive any chip manufacturer (including intel) would need to take a loss. Intel knows AMD will run out of money first (like MS and Netscape). When AMD does run out of money Intel will raise their pice again.
It's always nice to see price cuts; however, I'm a little conserned about the motivation. Competition is a good thing and it's nice to see that despite terible losses last quarter AMD is giving Intel a run for it's money. Intel knows that despite AMD's exageration the Avalon is still far better than the PIII. They also know that people will lose brand loyalty when faced with more perfomance for less cash.
The problem is this. Intel's motivation is not to sell more PIIIs because they cost less. Instead Intel plans to run AMD into the ground. Sound familliar? It should. This was exactly Microsoft's motivation for giving away IE -- run Netscape into the ground. Intel knows they have more capital and will win a war of atrition. When AMD goes under you can sure bet that Merced prices will start going way up.
AMD is Intel's last major competitor in the PC market. We might even see a reversal of sorts. If Intel continues this trend and AMD starts to put out CPUs that are a full generation (not a half gen.) ahead of Intel's. We might see that Intel remains the standard for OEM orders and AMD becomes the company that crazy people (like me) who live on the fringes of the net use for high power desktops/workstations. wouldn't Intel love it if it could push AMD into the maket of say Alpha?
Red Hat's common stock is devided into 66 million shares. This stock is owned by the company which in turn is owned by the original investers, founder, and some of the employees. The Company Red Hat will sell part of it's self at an initially fixed price. Now this money goes into the companie's bank acount so they can use it to expand etc. Once the company does this, each of it's owners sudenly can sell their portion of the company as common stock on the open exchange. If you owned 10% of Red Hat prior to the IPO you will own 6 million shares which you may now sell (actualy there are a few restrictions by the SEC on the time frame of this). It is the owners of Red Hat who make fortunes and they could not do it without Goldman Sacks (sp?).
counterpoint: It is worth noteing that G.S. has the 2nd highest profit margin of any company in the world after Nintendo.
I wonder how many/. postings had similar motivation. I wonder if any companies have people monitoring the coments and trying to shape the way conversation goes.
It's probably more likely on sites like deja but just a thought
I think the quality of the media has degraded in the last 10 years. When the equaltime policy was mandated under Regan, all third party opinions were compleetly shut out. The media (mostly) has been reduced to lots of little two sided battles of little significance.
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone have the actual brief? I didnt see it linked to from the article. Openlaw's DVD amicus curie brief was posted. Someone should post the actual brief.
Much Longer than that! The U.S. is a common law country and like in other common law countries (e.g., Great Brittan) our legal system is filled with two types of "law." These are common law and statutory law. Statutory law is given by the legelature and common law is given my the judicial system. If you've been following this case at all the DMCA is statutory while Summers vs. Tice is common law. Most of our legal system, including contract and tort law, is derived from English Common Law. The Constitution not only allows but requires this.
As for your bullet points...
Nobdy would ever have any clue as to whether they were breaking a law unless judges were able to interpret laws. If you don't like a judge's interpretation you can appeal it. This is why, in a criminal trial, we have a judge to interpret the law and a jury to interpret the facts. The Constitution says "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."(I.9.) A law is not an ex post facto law just because the judge decides whether or not you violated it after you violated it.
Well some judges are elected but you're right that for the most part higher up state and federal judges are not. I think most if not all judges would argue that their decisions are anything but arbitrary. You can appeal a judges decision so that these important legal decisions are not made by a "single" judge. If you don't like how judges are apointed then elect someone president who will put in judges that you like or write your congress(wo)man and say that you want an ammendment to the constitution passed which allows us to elect all judges. However I don't see the current system as being that bad. If you don't like that the court can make interpretive rulings like Mirranda or that a state can't succeed to escape a federal excise tax then you are entitled to your opinions.
That is exactly why you can appeal. Once the surpreme court rules on something it applies everywhere in the U.S.
I understand how it's diferent technologicaly. I meant "How is it diferent legaly?"
I dont see what the difference is between TiVo and a VCR. They both allow time shifting. The TiVo allows realtime time shifting. So what? How is this thing supposed to infrenge on the network's copyrights? The networks are just upset that people might skip the commercials. A Tivo is an article of commerce with substancial non-infrenging uses(like the VCR). Therefore, unlike napster, The networks cannot enjoin the technology.
... inocent untill proven guilty?
This is a civil trial right? How can one company legaly force another company to cease comerce without a trial? Even if napster is found not liable, they will have suffered damages due to the law suit. Don't they teach us in school that this kind of thing doesn't happen in America?
A state cannot tax mail order from another state. They cannot tax or even regulate a transaction that happens across state lines (i.e., niehter state can). Any state law that does this or attempts to do this is UNCONSTITUTIONAL! The Constitution states that Congress shall have the sole power to regulate interstate commerse. There have been numerous supreme court cases to establish the precident that a transaction which crosses state lines cannot be regulated or taxed by either state. That is a power reserved for the federal government.
I find it annoying that people post responces like "I don't believe it. A computer can't do x." When the article said that this new computer program can do y. Slashdot has been invaded by the posters on Amazon that say "Well I havn't read the book but this is what I think..."
Just a request... before you flame me or moderate me down read the article and read some of the potings on this story.
I would defninitly like to see some of that USB code. Does anyone know of anything like the Aero 8000 that runs linux well. I could realy use a thin client laptop that I can use around campus and run porgrams remotely.
My biggest complaint with the whole thing was the reaction I got from the rest of the linux community. Often when I told people that there was no driver I was told to write one. But, when I explained that the specs hadn't been released a few people told me (they were actualy serious) to reverse engineer the chip in a cleen-room. I don't know how many of you have cleen-rooms around but I sure don't have one set up in my living room if you know what I mean. Nor do I have the time to reverse engineer a graphics card on a single chip.
Eventualy a driver was released and I thank all those who contributed to it. However, I still am troubled by the way non-laptop linux users don't support their fellow linux users in dealing with laptop OEMs and the OEMs' suppliers.
Which brings me to my seccond point:
It's not just laptops!!
Linux always lags behind other OSs in hardware support. Usualy this is due to some manufacturer not supplying drivers or worse still not releasing any information about the hardware. But other times it's just because we are slow. USB is a perfect example. The specifications are all open yet there's no linux drivers for USB stuff.
One of the great selling points of the open development model is that it can addapt quickly (e.g. IPv6) but it always seems to lag in hardware support.
I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure that BattleNet does not host the games. BattleNet simply provides a media by which to set up games which are then run over TCP/IP sockets between the computers in the game. That's why you can loose your connection to battlenet and continue playing the game. This used to happen to me when I played really long games last spring. You should upgrade your internet connection.
That's right in the x86 world they don't limit you by frimware. Instead They change the socket so the new CPU wont even fit.
For years, the FCC hasn't had any rules for stations broadcasting under 100 watts, and refused to create any rules. If I remember it's actualy 100mW
Every time MS senses a competitve edge they go against industry standards. Take COM for instance. MS knows that once they can get into a market they can bundle that product to the OS and effectivly stamp out competition. Soon we'll get MSNmesenger on our new computers when we buy them. It make sense for MS to create a standard. Once a standard has been integrated into windows MS can change it and the rest of the industry is forced to comply. If, 3 years later, MS desides to change to a proprietary standard they can. That way only MS clients will work on anyones server.
It's like MS Java. Someone had a great idea and MS decides to steal it. Once they have a market share they can eliminate all competition. Even if they have to take a loss to do it. This is a clear example of MS's attitude that every computer in the world should be running *only* MS software.
I hope they would release it GPL rather than just ditch it.
Do you think that the intent of this bill makes it any less of a privacy violation*? How bout this*? Random car and house searches are ok b/c they are looking for drugs and drugs are bad. So It's ok if 20 or so DEA guys come in and trash your house looking for drugs. Do you think that any senator is going to say they are doing something to eliminate privacy*? Of course they want to fight some alement to society. I just think they can do so without restricting my rights any.
This is basicly what you are saying. Oh sure, it's ok. This isn't a privacy issue because they are looking for illegal imagrents. But why stop there at national ID cards*? How about Global ID cards*? Or do you like that idea too*?
The whole thing sounds pretty shady to me. This is still a few steps form the Nazi *"Stop*! Papers please.*" But, we are getting closer.
Crime is a cancer to society and like cancer the symptoms of the treatment for crime seem to be getting worse than the symptoms of the crime itself.
... to count as a US resident in this case. Actualy it should say perminant resident. Citizens and resident aliens are elegible acording to the SEC.
I've seen many postings on both sides of an apperent debate. Some people claim that this is some kind of underhanded move by the people at etrade. Others would sugest that this shows how RedHat cares about its customers. One person likened it to RedHat throwing money in our faces. I say to all of you, "Calm It!"
Now, a few things. First the way IPO's work is like this. The portion of the company to be sold publicly is given to one main (in this case two) brokers. They in turn sell the stock at a price determined jointly by the broker, the company, and to some extend SEC rules. The borkers sell a portion to "friends and family" of the company having the IPO, a portion to the brokers customers, and a large part to other brokers. The other brokers sell some to their customers and put some into mutual funds etc. It is the small portion that goes to the brokers customers that apears to be in dispute.
It is not uncommon for this to be mostly sold to the winners of a lottery; however, some of this stock can be given to people in the industry. In the case of RedHat there just hapens to be a lot of people in the industry.
Yes, ETrade can require you to have an acount (they sell it to their customers remember). This creates competion and is why everyone wants to sponsor IPOs.
I can't find the book that gives the exact equation but I seem to remember reading that a black hole with an event horizon the size of one neutron would have a mass of about one hundred million tons. Now excuse the crudity of this next step but a million tons is about 1 billion killograms so 100M tons is 10^11 kg. Now, from High school physics:
F = G (m_1 * m_2)/(r^2)
so if m_1 is the black hole and m_2 is a 220 pound (100kg)person then:
F = (6.67e-11)(1e11*100)/(r^2)
F = 667/(r^2)
Now this means that a person at one meter from the point of colision would feel a force of 667 Newtons -- about 130 pounds
That is not a whole lot; however, there is a catch. As the size of a black whole increases (by size I mean the radius at which the escape velocity is equal to the speed of light) the density increases. This means that one of a radius of say an atom 1000 times the radius 1 billion times the volume could be 1 trillion times the mass. In other words, New York is gone. D.C. is gone. Philly is gone. Chicago, Boston, Miami, and maybe Houston are all gone. It probably wont destroy the earth but man made structures would have a problem. How much nearly sideways force can a building take? I don't know. Thats not my area of specialty and I encurage information from people who do know. But remember, the force is directly related to the mass and I do know that buildings are pretty heavy.
Please any one who knows the mass of buildings or the amount of side force they can take please reply. Also if anyone can find the actual equation for the mass a black hole please post it. Probably (hopefully) it wont happen but it's still a fun exersise to figure the damage.
No. Intel would lower the price on chips so that to be competitive any chip manufacturer (including intel) would need to take a loss. Intel knows AMD will run out of money first (like MS and Netscape). When AMD does run out of money Intel will raise their pice again.
It's always nice to see price cuts; however, I'm a little conserned about the motivation. Competition is a good thing and it's nice to see that despite terible losses last quarter AMD is giving Intel a run for it's money. Intel knows that despite AMD's exageration the Avalon is still far better than the PIII. They also know that people will lose brand loyalty when faced with more perfomance for less cash.
The problem is this. Intel's motivation is not to sell more PIIIs because they cost less. Instead Intel plans to run AMD into the ground. Sound familliar? It should. This was exactly Microsoft's motivation for giving away IE -- run Netscape into the ground. Intel knows they have more capital and will win a war of atrition. When AMD goes under you can sure bet that Merced prices will start going way up.
AMD is Intel's last major competitor in the PC market. We might even see a reversal of sorts. If Intel continues this trend and AMD starts to put out CPUs that are a full generation (not a half gen.) ahead of Intel's. We might see that Intel remains the standard for OEM orders and AMD becomes the company that crazy people (like me) who live on the fringes of the net use for high power desktops/workstations. wouldn't Intel love it if it could push AMD into the maket of say Alpha?
Microsoft only owns 15% of apple but that's still enough to efectivly control the company.
e.g., Internet Explorer bundled to the MacOS
Red Hat's common stock is devided into 66 million shares. This stock is owned by the company which in turn is owned by the original investers, founder, and some of the employees. The Company Red Hat will sell part of it's self at an initially fixed price. Now this money goes into the companie's bank acount so they can use it to expand etc. Once the company does this, each of it's owners sudenly can sell their portion of the company as common stock on the open exchange. If you owned 10% of Red Hat prior to the IPO you will own 6 million shares which you may now sell (actualy there are a few restrictions by the SEC on the time frame of this). It is the owners of Red Hat who make fortunes and they could not do it without Goldman Sacks (sp?).
counterpoint: It is worth noteing that G.S. has the 2nd highest profit margin of any company in the world after Nintendo.
I wonder how many /. postings had similar motivation. I wonder if any companies have people monitoring the coments and trying to shape the way conversation goes.
It's probably more likely on sites like deja but just a thought
I never said anything about malice. Just that the attempt to eliminate bias furthered bias. This is stupidity at it's greatest.
I think the quality of the media has degraded in the last 10 years. When the equaltime policy was mandated under Regan, all third party opinions were compleetly shut out. The media (mostly) has been reduced to lots of little two sided battles of little significance.