That's easy - These companies that give away software en masse need a means of making up for their losses (on labor, distribution, etc.) down the road. Selling their victim's (er...licensee's) spare bandwidth is as nefarious (er...good) a way as any to make money.
"KaZaA reserves the right to change or modify any of the terms and conditions of this licence and any of the policies governing the Software at any time in its sole discretion without direct notice to you. Your continued use of the Software following these changes will constitute your acceptance of such changes."
I'm curious to hear from the attorneys in the crowd: is it even remotely possible that this would hold up in court?
If XML becomes the de-facto standard for document content and styling, proprietary formats (e.g., Word) will no longer be an issue re: security, and neither will their consequent e-mail attachments.
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear in my first message, so let me try again:
"...the ISPs may not have control over what their customers send out, but they do have a choice of not serving customers who cause problems for other people on the Net."
So if I complain to Comcast that I don't like so-and-so's Web site, which happens to be hosted on their servers, they should take it down?
"Setting up barriers like this is regrettable, but when the originating ISPs refuse to take responsibility for the actions of their users or close their open mail servers, there would seem to be no other choice. "
Do we really want ISP's taking responsibilities for the actions of their users? I can think of some downsides to that: if I find out an ISP is censoring e-mail based on what it's customers are sending, I might be more successful when I sue that ISP over content that appears on the sites it hosts which I find objectionable (Not that I would, but do you agree with the point in principle?)
I work for a firm that indexes a scholarly database of research articles in psychology. We use a controlled vocabulary to describe the content of each abstract, which can vastly simplify life (for the users who know how to use it, natch.) Does Google (or anyone else) pursue this sort of strategy?
(Out trolling...)
The fascinating thing about this discussion is that (acc. to my very non-scientific sampling of the available data), roughly 80% of the responses to this NAT detection business are "Hey Slashdot! How can I get away with stealing service from Comcast?" This is as opposed to the normal reaction of someone who lives in a market-based economy, which is "Hey Slashdot! Let's all dump our Comcast service in favor of DSL to show Comcast we won't put up with this shinola!" Don't get me wrong - I'd be pissed off as well (if I hadn't switched to DSL a while ago,;) but just because your mad at your bank doesn't mean you should use a Glock to make your next withdrawal, know what I mean?
I don't know much about UML in particular, but I've found that Microsoft's (evil empire blah blah) Visio is a pretty decent flowcharting program, and it stores the charts in XML format (they're like vector graphics: entirely described by the data; no binary required.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Now THAT'S funny! Too bad I'm not moderating...
That's easy - These companies that give away software en masse need a means of making up for their losses (on labor, distribution, etc.) down the road. Selling their victim's (er...licensee's) spare bandwidth is as nefarious (er...good) a way as any to make money.
The best part of the license agreement is this:
"KaZaA reserves the right to change or modify any of the terms and conditions of this licence and any of the policies governing the Software at any time in its sole discretion without direct notice to you. Your continued use of the Software following these changes will constitute your acceptance of such changes."
I'm curious to hear from the attorneys in the crowd: is it even remotely possible that this would hold up in court?
If XML becomes the de-facto standard for document content and styling, proprietary formats (e.g., Word) will no longer be an issue re: security, and neither will their consequent e-mail attachments.
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear in my first message, so let me try again:
"...the ISPs may not have control over what their customers send out, but they do have a choice of not serving customers who cause problems for other people on the Net."
So if I complain to Comcast that I don't like so-and-so's Web site, which happens to be hosted on their servers, they should take it down?
"Setting up barriers like this is regrettable, but when the originating ISPs refuse to take responsibility for the actions of their users or close their open mail servers, there would seem to be no other choice. "
Do we really want ISP's taking responsibilities for the actions of their users? I can think of some downsides to that: if I find out an ISP is censoring e-mail based on what it's customers are sending, I might be more successful when I sue that ISP over content that appears on the sites it hosts which I find objectionable (Not that I would, but do you agree with the point in principle?)
I work for a firm that indexes a scholarly database of research articles in psychology. We use a controlled vocabulary to describe the content of each abstract, which can vastly simplify life (for the users who know how to use it, natch.) Does Google (or anyone else) pursue this sort of strategy?
(Out trolling...) ;) but just because your mad at your bank doesn't mean you should use a Glock to make your next withdrawal, know what I mean?
The fascinating thing about this discussion is that (acc. to my very non-scientific sampling of the available data), roughly 80% of the responses to this NAT detection business are "Hey Slashdot! How can I get away with stealing service from Comcast?" This is as opposed to the normal reaction of someone who lives in a market-based economy, which is "Hey Slashdot! Let's all dump our Comcast service in favor of DSL to show Comcast we won't put up with this shinola!" Don't get me wrong - I'd be pissed off as well (if I hadn't switched to DSL a while ago,
I don't know much about UML in particular, but I've found that Microsoft's (evil empire blah blah) Visio is a pretty decent flowcharting program, and it stores the charts in XML format (they're like vector graphics: entirely described by the data; no binary required. :)