It's really simple. NYT has arranged for a special URL to bypass the access, so that Googles newsbots can index it's news stories. They did this in a really trivial and not very inventive way, and people quickly picked up on it. They don't want people doing that, so they're going to change this.
That said, there's no "onus" anywhere. The special URL is the result of a deal between the NYT and Google (because NYT _wants_ to be on Google news), not any sort of special hacking by Google. Even if there wasn't any deal, then there'd be no onus on Google at all - it's how the web works. If you want to restrict content, then put up that 403 error and make people sign in. That'll stop every web spider in existence.
Personally, I already don't use the NYT because I find the logon page to be intrusive and obnoxious. If I got redirected to a logon page from stories indexed at Google News, I'd be pissed off.
There actually was a reason for not using the pencils - there was worry that the graphite dust & eraser shavings would muck up the sophisticated electronics onboard.
I work for a government agency, and MY biggest problem is that nobody knows what the hell the requirements are - theres no one person or one set of people who know how we do things, so at every meeting (even now, weeks after we've entered our initial testing phase) somebody pipes up with a new requirement thats critical for fitting into existing systems.
No matter whether the code they released was done on purpose or not, if they choose to claim IP rights on it, then they're in violation of the GPL _right now_ as well as those 2 months for distributing everything ELSE in Linux. No matter what.
Assume for the moment that SCO has ironclad, indisputable evidence of code that they provably, in an ironclad way, own the copyright to has been commited into Linux. What harm would they be done by telling the Linux community what code this is so it can be removed?
SCO ceartainly has provably released any infringing code. There's no possible argument against this. Whether that release is legally meaningful is more debatable, but considering the time lapse I think it'd be a pretty uphill battle.
The "Linux is unaffected" line is hyperbole, I agree, but if you read it as "the legal status of Linux is unaffected" it's much more correct. Certainly this case can and has harmed commercial adoption of Linux.
If thats truly the case, I certainly theres a shareholder lawsuit against McBride, because thats grossly negilgent. Or even if he just says tahts the case.
JIT is better than interpeting, but is not faster than native code in most circumstances. The extra optimization you can do via runtime knowledge rarely compensates for the JIT overhead. In any case,.NET also uses JIT - the JITed code is cached for later use, however. Sort of a best of both worlds thing.
And yet, you don't see anyone rising up in arms about how the general populace doesn't know enough about cars and how we need to change automotive terminology. People need to educate themselves, and all the same resources for cars are there for computers.
This is precisely why most people, who don't know this jargon, have someone else tell them what they need in a computer. Just like people who don't know anything about cars do. And they sometimes get ripped off because of it.
Now, knowing enought to USE your computer is a little bit different - plugging in a digital camera isn't any more difficult that learning how to shift gears, but people have been told all thier lives that computers are too complicated for them to understand and turn thier brains off.
Well, _I'm_ not, and so what if I was? It's new for Microsoft. Windows has had NTFS write support for forever too, but if/when they finally get that working properly under Linux people will do all sorts of happy dances. Are you saying that a free implementation will always be better? It certainly can't run.NET code as well.
Why does having had a feature for 10 years make your feature better? If it is, then argue on the merits, not on how long you've had it. If Microsoft stuff is inferior, fine, but it's not inferior BECAUSE it's 10 years younger.
Why should a method have to declare that it throws an exception? Thats the compiler placing a burden on the programmer. I'd disagree really that it's been dumbed down any more than Java has been.
It's because nobody knew what the fuck.NET meant because it was being used to refer to at least 3 different things - all the new MS products, whether they used or were based on other.NET technology or not, the whole web services paradigm, and finally the VM and CLR. None of these are neccesarily related, and it was just causing confusion. So they up and removed the.NET from everything, which was just as bad imo.
Without making any sort of judgment call on the stability of free OSes vrs non-free ones (10 years ago, all the free OSes were stomped into the ground by commercial Unices anyway), what does stability 10 years ago have to do with stability right now?
J2EE servers generally compile to native code in much the way.NET does. I haven't seen any benchmarks but I understand they're vastly superior to your standard JVM. It all depends on what kind of target space you're looking at -.NET gui's are still noticeably less efficent than native win32 ones, and Java ones are even worse (people keep telling me this isn't true. It's true for every Java app I've used, although Eclipse is probably the best. It's far in the minority though, most Java apps are painful).
On the other hand, sever processes on both platforms perform much better (sometimes even beating native code, as you mentioned).
I'm not sure that it being open source would help much, since I'm guessing by your statements that you aren't a programmer. And of course, it being a hardware problem is not precluded by having other machines that work fine.
Actually, there is, and it's really common. You know that lawsuit against IBM? Thats money that they want taken away from IBM and given to an organization that will turn a profit. The motive here would be resitution - the idea being that income gained from illegal activity is forfeit and that it's owed to the people who would have profited had you not performed your illegal activities.
Now, why they didn't ask for restitution in this case I don't know - I assume there was some legal reason, or political decision. Or maybe they did, and the judge didn't accept it. But it's certainly not unreasonable.
On the other hand, putting that money into an OSS fund, while a cool idea, doesn't actually give the money to the people who were harmed by MS - Netscape, Be, these are the kind of people who deserve restitution.
There's special laws about chemicals that require that labeling. It's why it's legal to sell fertilizer, but not to use it as a bomb. I wonder how useful a similar label on, say, DeCSS would be.
They aren't claiming thats how much thier IP is worth, they're claiming thats how much money IBM has made off of Linux & AIX, and that they deserve all that money.
SPAM certainly isn't known universally, and in any case, the protection is hardly automatic. And allowing it at all is moronic and hopefully this court, like other, more intelligent courts, will dismiss such an argument.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, there's no "onus" anywhere. The special URL is the result of a deal between the NYT and Google (because NYT _wants_ to be on Google news), not any sort of special hacking by Google. Even if there wasn't any deal, then there'd be no onus on Google at all - it's how the web works. If you want to restrict content, then put up that 403 error and make people sign in. That'll stop every web spider in existence.
Personally, I already don't use the NYT because I find the logon page to be intrusive and obnoxious. If I got redirected to a logon page from stories indexed at Google News, I'd be pissed off.
There actually was a reason for not using the pencils - there was worry that the graphite dust & eraser shavings would muck up the sophisticated electronics onboard.
What the hell use is a scripting language that can't access the filesystem?
I work for a government agency, and MY biggest problem is that nobody knows what the hell the requirements are - theres no one person or one set of people who know how we do things, so at every meeting (even now, weeks after we've entered our initial testing phase) somebody pipes up with a new requirement thats critical for fitting into existing systems.
No matter whether the code they released was done on purpose or not, if they choose to claim IP rights on it, then they're in violation of the GPL _right now_ as well as those 2 months for distributing everything ELSE in Linux. No matter what.
SCO ceartainly has provably released any infringing code. There's no possible argument against this. Whether that release is legally meaningful is more debatable, but considering the time lapse I think it'd be a pretty uphill battle.
The "Linux is unaffected" line is hyperbole, I agree, but if you read it as "the legal status of Linux is unaffected" it's much more correct. Certainly this case can and has harmed commercial adoption of Linux.
If thats truly the case, I certainly theres a shareholder lawsuit against McBride, because thats grossly negilgent. Or even if he just says tahts the case.
JIT is better than interpeting, but is not faster than native code in most circumstances. The extra optimization you can do via runtime knowledge rarely compensates for the JIT overhead. In any case, .NET also uses JIT - the JITed code is cached for later use, however. Sort of a best of both worlds thing.
See, now you know how all the VMS guys felt.
And yet, you don't see anyone rising up in arms about how the general populace doesn't know enough about cars and how we need to change automotive terminology. People need to educate themselves, and all the same resources for cars are there for computers.
Now, knowing enought to USE your computer is a little bit different - plugging in a digital camera isn't any more difficult that learning how to shift gears, but people have been told all thier lives that computers are too complicated for them to understand and turn thier brains off.
Why does having had a feature for 10 years make your feature better? If it is, then argue on the merits, not on how long you've had it. If Microsoft stuff is inferior, fine, but it's not inferior BECAUSE it's 10 years younger.
Why should a method have to declare that it throws an exception? Thats the compiler placing a burden on the programmer. I'd disagree really that it's been dumbed down any more than Java has been.
It's because nobody knew what the fuck .NET meant because it was being used to refer to at least 3 different things - all the new MS products, whether they used or were based on other .NET technology or not, the whole web services paradigm, and finally the VM and CLR. None of these are neccesarily related, and it was just causing confusion. So they up and removed the .NET from everything, which was just as bad imo.
Without making any sort of judgment call on the stability of free OSes vrs non-free ones (10 years ago, all the free OSes were stomped into the ground by commercial Unices anyway), what does stability 10 years ago have to do with stability right now?
On the other hand, sever processes on both platforms perform much better (sometimes even beating native code, as you mentioned).
It's worth at least looking at Mono - I understand some people are using it successfully to replace Java apps with .NET ones.
It's a really strong sign of a sick and twisted market that the market leader can drop thier price by 90% and still expect to turn a profit.
I'm not sure that it being open source would help much, since I'm guessing by your statements that you aren't a programmer. And of course, it being a hardware problem is not precluded by having other machines that work fine.
Now, why they didn't ask for restitution in this case I don't know - I assume there was some legal reason, or political decision. Or maybe they did, and the judge didn't accept it. But it's certainly not unreasonable.
On the other hand, putting that money into an OSS fund, while a cool idea, doesn't actually give the money to the people who were harmed by MS - Netscape, Be, these are the kind of people who deserve restitution.
There's special laws about chemicals that require that labeling. It's why it's legal to sell fertilizer, but not to use it as a bomb. I wonder how useful a similar label on, say, DeCSS would be.
There's no AUP on an XBOX. They've got a pretty decent DMCA case, but for releasing the information, not for doing it.
They aren't claiming thats how much thier IP is worth, they're claiming thats how much money IBM has made off of Linux & AIX, and that they deserve all that money.
You don't get mail with those clear envelopes? The metal plates on your your door don't have plastic film on them? NONE of your books have a jacket?
SPAM certainly isn't known universally, and in any case, the protection is hardly automatic. And allowing it at all is moronic and hopefully this court, like other, more intelligent courts, will dismiss such an argument.