How do they prevent this from indiscriminately spreading between people who kiss each other?
If it did spread through kissing, how would they make their money back?
Police Officer: I'm sorry, son, you're going to have to come with me. Seems like you've got an illegal copy of DNA sequence 9422136A residing in the bacteria in your mouth.
The next poll should be - did you actually read some article about this, or are you voting with your entire knowledge of the issue coming from our question, "Was a judge correct in ordering Microsoft to reveal the coding for its Windows program?"
Probably most respondants do not know anything about the actual judgement, and are assuming that the question is, "should everybody and his dog be given access to the Windows source code?"
This is like their poll which found that, immediately after Sept. 11, the vast majority of respondants thought that the US should bomb Kabul in retaliation. Clearly the next poll should have been, "have you ever heard of Kabul?" It would probably come out that the majority of respondants were voting to bomb a city they had never heard of. Even better would be to pick a city in the US whose name sounds middle eastern, and ask if the US should bomb that.
And public opinion is probably still confused over the repeated reference in various media to "Windows source codes." The media (probably through their ignorance) made it seem like there were some encryption codes needed to unlock the secret power of windows or something.
If you are going to map out the project by hand, CodeWright from StarBase (formerly from Premia) is excellent.
It is the best editor I have seen yet (multiple language support, totally configurable, excellent tech support), and it is great for navigating large projects. It parses all of the files in your project as text (so you can browse code that does not compile), and is a good complement to Dev Studio's build-based browsing.
It integrates with Dev Studio, so the two editors and environments will update each other when you switch between them.
I probably shouldn't admit this on/., but at one job, I had a Windows box dedicated to running CodeWright, editing QNX code over Samba. It was actually worth the extra box. At another job, I was using it to edit files for Sun and DEC UNIX (no Samba this time), and it was still worth it to ftp the files back and forth, rather than use what I could find in the UNIX world at the time.
I know also that there is some really good code mapping software out there, but I can't give you any names off of the top of my head. Large sheets of paper really do the trick, though. I have seen people spend a lot of time with visio getting very little done, but I haven't used it myself, so don't listen to me and I'll shut up now.
I thought that the process defined in the patent had to be nonobvious.
The judge says that it covers "any means of transferring information so long as it can occur over telecommunications lines." That sounds like it would fail the nonobvious test by definition, since we were going to end up moving data across telecommunications lines like crazy without ever knowing about SightSound's ridiculous patent.
Is it true about the nonobvious issue, though? Anybody out there a patent lawyer (preferably one specializing in defending against frivolous patent claims)?
"the Software may automatically... install... ("Software Updates"), which may require you to accept updated terms and conditions for installation."
This means that they are claiming that if you agree to this licence, you are also agreeing to the licence of any application which installs itself (and you have agreed to let it install itself).
I'm sure that that is not legal, and could invalidate the whole agreement. On the other hand, I don't see how a licence agreement that you haven't signed is worth the pixels its printed on.
To say that Sun's online license agreements are binding would be to say that you are not allowed to click on a button with two words on it which is displayed on the web without agreeing to this contract.
As someone pointed out in response to another article, not agreeing to the licence agreement preserves your right to click on the "I Agree" button without agreeing to the licence agreement. It is in the agreement that it says that you agree that clicking the button means that you agree.
Actually, I think the fact that asserts go away when you do your release build is one of the disadvantages.
I prefer using a more sophisticated error handling object which uses exceptions (I'm talking C++, here) to trap and bubble up errors. This way you can decide what to do about a particular condition based on how severe it is and what avenues for error/status reporting you have access to.
You also don't neccesarily lose important data on an error just because a customer is reporting it (you can log something that you don't want the user to see).
Remember that the closer your debug binary is to your release binary, the more valuable your runtime experience with your debug version is when testing your release version.
A year or two ago at NAB, one of the keynote speeches was about why broadcast companies should not support campaign finance reform.
If part of the problem with the fairness of political campaigns is that too much money is spent on the media in order to influence public opinion, then the media has every incentive to use its own influence to hold on to this income flow. In other words, if you, as a politician, support campaign finance reform, then it is in the broadcasters interests to present you in a bad light in the media (or no light at all) whenever possible.
If you wanted to copy analog tapes at faster than 1x, you had to take another quality hit.
Also, tapes just weren't as convenient as most digital storage used now, so copying them and playing them was a bigger deal (don't forget not to record the first drum hit onto the tape leader).
But as long as you can do a high quality A/D conversion, it only takes one person with an analog line out from their DMCA compliant audio player to the analog input of their (pro) audio card to get a nice, new, clean, high quality, non copy protected copy which can swiftly propagate across the internet (or person to person - once you are no longer constrained to 1x, it becomes much more feasible to make copies for friends).
Untill they make it illegal to sell any player which does not include a complete closed audio path (from copy protected media, to a player which honors said copy protection, to speakers which are affixed in such a way that they cannot be disconnected without somehow destroying the unit), they have to give you an analog out.
A slashdot headline which is actually correct and meaningful, even though it sounds like a Japanese motherboard manual telling you to get excited about an upcoming auction.
I am probably the exception, not the norm. A lot of companies are afraid of the remote worker. Maybe because of issues like this, but maybe also because they have never seen a remote group which worked smoothly. They could also be afraid of secret slacking, but I think that it is easy enough decide whether they can justify your bill on the basis of the work you turn in.
I think I have just been lucky to get into some very well run remote groups. (The main obstacle tends to be communication, which is true with any software team, except that over the phone, you miss body language, so you need to be a bit more explicit.)
I have often wondered about this. Does anyone know if this has been tested in court?
I remember opening a copy of the Borland C++ compiler on floppies. There was a little circular seal on the envelope and a notice which said that breaking the seal constituted agreement.... I cut the envelope open and left the seal intact (which basically amounted to a private joke between me and the envelope).
But seriously, Mr. Jones (who knows very little about computers) has Jimmy from down the street come over and set up his computer. Jimmy may agree to all sorts of licences while installing all of the software that came with Mr. Jones's system (Mr. Jones is in the kitchen making a souffle during all of this). Mr. Jones hasn't agreed to anything (except maybe to share the souffle), so he isn't bound by any licence.
Jimmy may even install some software he pirated. Mr. Jones may think that the software came with the system (or is part of the OS, as if he would know the difference).
Ignorance of the law is not supposed to be an excuse, but what if the average person cannot reasonably be expected to know if they are breaking the law?
It sounds like my code is typically not work for hire under that definition, as, when I do consulting, I usually work from home on my own equipment with no benefits or taxes witheld.
I guess I am also unclear on the difference between a contractor and a consultant.
"Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'... It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." -General Eisenhower.
"The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... In being the first to use it [the atomic bomb], we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages." -Admiral William D. Leahy, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Truman's Chief of Staff
"A surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provision for America's defense against future trans-Pacific aggression." -Admiral William D. Leahy, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Truman's Chief of Staff
"It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell." -UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"Certainly prior to 31 December 1945... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated." -US Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946
Which does not change the fact that nuking any city in any circumstance is totally immoral.
The Japanese knew they had lost the war and were ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped. I really doubt that Truman actually believed that an invasion would be necessary in lieu of the bombs.
In response to the Pearl Harbor comment, there is a fair amount of speculation that FDR knew it was coming and used it as a way to garner public support for entering the war.
Slashdot Mirror
And will they start referring to everyone else as "et al"?
The article says that the bacteria seem to like sugar. What does it turn that sugar into instead of lactic acid?
If it did spread through kissing, how would they make their money back?
Police Officer: I'm sorry, son, you're going to have to come with me. Seems like you've got an illegal copy of DNA sequence 9422136A residing in the bacteria in your mouth.
Probably most respondants do not know anything about the actual judgement, and are assuming that the question is, "should everybody and his dog be given access to the Windows source code?"
This is like their poll which found that, immediately after Sept. 11, the vast majority of respondants thought that the US should bomb Kabul in retaliation. Clearly the next poll should have been, "have you ever heard of Kabul?" It would probably come out that the majority of respondants were voting to bomb a city they had never heard of. Even better would be to pick a city in the US whose name sounds middle eastern, and ask if the US should bomb that.
And public opinion is probably still confused over the repeated reference in various media to "Windows source codes." The media (probably through their ignorance) made it seem like there were some encryption codes needed to unlock the secret power of windows or something.
Sorry...
It is the best editor I have seen yet (multiple language support, totally configurable, excellent tech support), and it is great for navigating large projects. It parses all of the files in your project as text (so you can browse code that does not compile), and is a good complement to Dev Studio's build-based browsing.
It integrates with Dev Studio, so the two editors and environments will update each other when you switch between them.
I probably shouldn't admit this on /., but at one job, I had a Windows box dedicated to running CodeWright, editing QNX code over Samba. It was actually worth the extra box. At another job, I was using it to edit files for Sun and DEC UNIX (no Samba this time), and it was still worth it to ftp the files back and forth, rather than use what I could find in the UNIX world at the time.
I know also that there is some really good code mapping software out there, but I can't give you any names off of the top of my head. Large sheets of paper really do the trick, though. I have seen people spend a lot of time with visio getting very little done, but I haven't used it myself, so don't listen to me and I'll shut up now.
The judge says that it covers "any means of transferring information so long as it can occur over telecommunications lines." That sounds like it would fail the nonobvious test by definition, since we were going to end up moving data across telecommunications lines like crazy without ever knowing about SightSound's ridiculous patent.
Is it true about the nonobvious issue, though? Anybody out there a patent lawyer (preferably one specializing in defending against frivolous patent claims)?
"Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)"
I haven't seen one yet with a bad-guy-detector on it.
This means that they are claiming that if you agree to this licence, you are also agreeing to the licence of any application which installs itself (and you have agreed to let it install itself).
I'm sure that that is not legal, and could invalidate the whole agreement. On the other hand, I don't see how a licence agreement that you haven't signed is worth the pixels its printed on.
To say that Sun's online license agreements are binding would be to say that you are not allowed to click on a button with two words on it which is displayed on the web without agreeing to this contract.
As someone pointed out in response to another article, not agreeing to the licence agreement preserves your right to click on the "I Agree" button without agreeing to the licence agreement. It is in the agreement that it says that you agree that clicking the button means that you agree.
Is that convoluted enough?
The article says Wang Labs.
I prefer using a more sophisticated error handling object which uses exceptions (I'm talking C++, here) to trap and bubble up errors. This way you can decide what to do about a particular condition based on how severe it is and what avenues for error/status reporting you have access to.
You also don't neccesarily lose important data on an error just because a customer is reporting it (you can log something that you don't want the user to see).
Remember that the closer your debug binary is to your release binary, the more valuable your runtime experience with your debug version is when testing your release version.
If part of the problem with the fairness of political campaigns is that too much money is spent on the media in order to influence public opinion, then the media has every incentive to use its own influence to hold on to this income flow. In other words, if you, as a politician, support campaign finance reform, then it is in the broadcasters interests to present you in a bad light in the media (or no light at all) whenever possible.
It really is quite a conundrum...
Mod him up for humor, just to throw a monkey wrench into his plans.
Also, tapes just weren't as convenient as most digital storage used now, so copying them and playing them was a bigger deal (don't forget not to record the first drum hit onto the tape leader).
But as long as you can do a high quality A/D conversion, it only takes one person with an analog line out from their DMCA compliant audio player to the analog input of their (pro) audio card to get a nice, new, clean, high quality, non copy protected copy which can swiftly propagate across the internet (or person to person - once you are no longer constrained to 1x, it becomes much more feasible to make copies for friends).
Untill they make it illegal to sell any player which does not include a complete closed audio path (from copy protected media, to a player which honors said copy protection, to speakers which are affixed in such a way that they cannot be disconnected without somehow destroying the unit), they have to give you an analog out.
A slashdot headline which is actually correct and meaningful, even though it sounds like a Japanese motherboard manual telling you to get excited about an upcoming auction.
I think I have just been lucky to get into some very well run remote groups. (The main obstacle tends to be communication, which is true with any software team, except that over the phone, you miss body language, so you need to be a bit more explicit.)
I remember opening a copy of the Borland C++ compiler on floppies. There was a little circular seal on the envelope and a notice which said that breaking the seal constituted agreement.... I cut the envelope open and left the seal intact (which basically amounted to a private joke between me and the envelope).
But seriously, Mr. Jones (who knows very little about computers) has Jimmy from down the street come over and set up his computer. Jimmy may agree to all sorts of licences while installing all of the software that came with Mr. Jones's system (Mr. Jones is in the kitchen making a souffle during all of this). Mr. Jones hasn't agreed to anything (except maybe to share the souffle), so he isn't bound by any licence.
Jimmy may even install some software he pirated. Mr. Jones may think that the software came with the system (or is part of the OS, as if he would know the difference).
Ignorance of the law is not supposed to be an excuse, but what if the average person cannot reasonably be expected to know if they are breaking the law?
I guess I am also unclear on the difference between a contractor and a consultant.
Hello, footpad...
It is only when you are a real employee that the work for hire issue applies.
I don't know the exact definitions for what constitutes an employee vs. what makes you a contractor, though. Anyone?
Here is a link to a copy of the 1946 report. You can just search for the string there. It is the very last line before the "conclusion" section.
"The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... In being the first to use it [the atomic bomb], we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages." -Admiral William D. Leahy, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Truman's Chief of Staff
"A surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provision for America's defense against future trans-Pacific aggression." -Admiral William D. Leahy, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Truman's Chief of Staff
"It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell." -UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill
"Certainly prior to 31 December 1945... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated." -US Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946
I may be an idiot, but I am not full of shit.
Which does not change the fact that nuking any city in any circumstance is totally immoral.
The Japanese knew they had lost the war and were ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped. I really doubt that Truman actually believed that an invasion would be necessary in lieu of the bombs.
In response to the Pearl Harbor comment, there is a fair amount of speculation that FDR knew it was coming and used it as a way to garner public support for entering the war.
That's like saying, "I had to stab him twice because he hadn't succeeded in giving me his wallet by the time I was done stabbing him the first time."