They aren't psuedo-perpetual like copyright, they expire in 7 years, and they're more easily fought and defended. -----
No they aren't. I agree that they expire on a somewhat more reasonable time frame (of course, as far as technology & algorithms go, even seven years is an eternity), however, at least in the US, they're rubber stamped by the USPTO and then given a legal presumption of validity. The other side has to prove they didn't infringe.
Also, coming up with an original work is no defense--you can infringe upon a patent you have never heard of before. You might get some mileage out of independent creation, in that if you're an average practitioner skilled in the art, and it was obvious to you, it probably shouldn't have been patented, but I don't know that I'd bet on it. Don't forget the legal fees, too. I'm not sure you can recover them at all, even if the lawsuit is pretty baseless.
So yes, there are plenty of things which could be fixed. Also, IANAL, I just read about this stuff a lot, so the usual disclaimers against taking this as legal advice apply.
If you mosey on over to this Groklaw article, you'll see that Judge Kimball appears to be fixin' to have a three-way showdown--IBM & Novell vs. SCO.
If you've read the legal briefs, you should know by now that both Novell & IBM have hammered on SCO's counsel for asserting some rather convenient but inconsistant things before the judge. In other words, they assert whatever is most beneficial to their case--leaving SCO with a few more arguements, but no consistant case. While they might be able to make that slide a bit better when they're talking as two separate cases, saying different things about the two different cases while discussing them in front of the same judge can't help them any--they'll have pick a side of some of those fences they're sitting on and stick with it.
Problem is, IBM & Novell have them trapped in a narrow pass, effectively, due to some good lawyering on both of their sides. They're going to have to face the music one way or another--if they take one way out of that pass they're in, IBM will get them, whereas Novell is coming down the other side. In other words, SCO is being attacked on two fronts with no retreat, and IBM is now a bit pissed off with SCO's lawyers after the last few tricks (such as citing a Westlaw headnote without attribution, using a priviledge IBM document as an exhibit in clear violation of one of the discovery agreements with IBM, and a few other things I can't remember right now...). Marbux and AllParadox on Groklaw posted on SCO's malfeasance better than I can, and both of those two are lawyers, though they still put up a few disclaimers about not taking what they say as legal advice.
Anyhow, unless this is a mistake by the court in having them all meet up at the same in front of the same judge (possible, but doubtful), you can expect SCO to be routed--their lawyers seem harried, disorganized and ready to have their asses handed to them just as soon as IBM & Novell are done with them.
Mark your calendars, folks--if this is what it looks like, SCO is going to have one hell of a time getting out of this with anything but a ruling which further weakens them. Even if SCO has an ace up their sleeves, I'm not sure they can be holding any better than aces & eights--the dead man's hand.
Object. Submit proof of your class membership along with a letter to the parties listed in the letter you should've gotten detailing why you think the settlement isn't "fair, reasonable and adequate." For example, I'm looking into opposing the Arizona settlement because it's inadequate--I don't think it's quite as good as the CA settlement (but I still have to finish my comparisons). Speaking of which, if any legal-types who know Arizona court rules & wouldn't mind helping me out are welcome to contact me -- mvenzke gmail com -- because the Arizona vouchers do seem rather crappy & calculated to funnel the money right back to Microsoft.
I'm afraid that vouchers & this crap are the norm in class actions:-/
I have a number of filters set up to place new emails in various folders, and then to archive them ("skip the inbox").
It most certainly DOES show me a little "Labelname (1)" or whatever by the label whenever I have new messages in them.
The only exception to this is the "Spam" label--you just have to check that one every so often, because it doesn't show such an indicator (and it's excluded from searches by default).
I did submit feedback on that point, though--I really think it should notify us even of new spam.
If you read them, SCO is betting the farm on a diversion tactic to answer IBM's request for summary judgement.
Basically, they're feigning surprise that this is an issue, complaining that they need more discovery, and trying to say that they haven't had time to properly prepare for this because it could take 25,000 man hours.
Unfortunately for them, IBM responds that it's been hammering SCO on this question for over a year now (in spite of SCO sticking their heads in the sand to avoid it). Also, IBM's experts say that SCO's characterization of the times involved is ridiculous and SCO has already claimed in the media *many* times to have made these comparisons already (even though it refuses to provide them to IBM).
Worse, SCO's "experts" haven't been properly qualified, they're testifying about things they would appear to have no personal knowledge of, and as such IBM is moving to strike our large portions of their declarations, meaning that SCO wouldn't have much of an arguement left. This is especially true because SCO's Samir Gupta, the only "expert" who appears to have done any code comparisons (and I say "expert" because they give no credentials for him other than him being in the employ of SCO), has completely ignored the abstraction & filtration required by the case law (whereas IBM's properly qualified MIT professor has done one refuting theirs, which respects the case law in question).
Lastly, they point out via copious amounts of case law that SCO does *not* need any more discovery. They show that the only thing which matters for a judgement in terms of *copyright infringement* is the two final works. SCO surely has its own product line, and IBM points them to every version of Linux since 1.0, which is available online.
Taken in sum, unless SCO can pull off one hell of a miracle to convince the judge in the oral arguments, I would tend to think that SCO is screwed here. SCO's tactic of sticking its head in the sand to try and duck IBM's arguement doesn't seem very persuasive, and *SCO* has the burden of proof to show that there are material facts in dispute. Given how IBM so carefully destroys all the testamony SCO relies on, it's hard to see how SCO could prevail in any meaningful way when these motions are resolved.
Well, considering that they were once the "bad guy" company, not unlike the Microsoft of today to many here, I'd say they've turned things around quite well.
As long as they're defending open source with their lawyers, I can't imagine a sane person wanting to attack it--I've read the legal briefs, they don't miss a thing.
Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either -
(1)
for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
(2)
by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.
Let's see... they went in to someone's home and took their stuff.
And made no arrests.
I don't recall the gov't being able to do that before 9/11... so... I'm sure it is related somehow.
It's called a search warrant. It may give them the right to sieze all sorts of crap. Sometimes, they even write really bad ones and the government gets in trouble (see Steve Jackson Games vs. the US Secret Service, which is still an important case concerning the seizure of electronic materials, even if some of the courts holdings in it have been weakened in more recent decisions).
Next thing you know, someone will be telling us that those penis enhancement pills are legit, too, just because they advertise on TV...
What does that one commercial say? "We said it on TV, so it must be true!"
I seem to remember a few very... interesting... statements televised by the Iraqi Information Minister, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton & Richard Nixon, too, and that's off the top of my head.
Let's start with the fundamentals: copyright (NOT "copywrite") is a monopoly for a limited time (we hope) to promote innovation.
Profits are seen as a means to this end--e.g. people will innovate more often if there's enough reward for doing so.
Fair use balances that interest in that, if your use of the material doesn't, among other things, threaten their profits, if it is educational (e.g. likely to lead to more innovation), etc., it is not seen as harmful. Thus, it is protected by the First Ammendment, which is balanced with the concerns of the copyright clause in the constitution.
So there's no fallacy in deciding whether something is really fair use simply based on profits--after all, most sensible people recognize the value of fair use. However, many of us do think that there are issues for reform, as we have shown via free & open source software (FOSS) that profit isn't the only motive whereby people are encouraged to innovate (though people can certainly profit from FOSS), and that there are thus legitimate issues on which to reform IP law to maximize it's true goal--increasing innovation (and not merely increasing profits to increase innovation).
So there's no black and white moral imperative here, and no fallacy in pointing out that, under the current scheme, increased profits are calculated to give increased innovation, making those things which substantially decrease profits more harmful than those things which do not. Granted, there's the issue of how exactly P2P applications really affect their bottom line, and I would much rather see reform, but the number of abuses really is relevant here.
What would you argue to a judge, anyhow, if you were asking them to declare that the other person shouldn't sue you if the other side had offered a settlement where they wouldn't sue you, anyhow?
Judges don't like having their time wasted, you know...
Have you ever had the pleasure of launchign an app, tellign you it has an update and it offers to upgrade for ya? You click OK, the thing downloads, installs and restarts with no user intervention?
Yes. But usually it installs useless crap or updates to things I don't use and don't want to.
There is an update notification icon which leads you to the update page in firefox, I believe. As for the rest *shrug* I only update it every few months. Moving a few files around is no big deal, especially since that procedure has been the same the whole time.
But yeah, I would like to see the installer smart enough to do that for me.
As for not clicking on links you don't trust, I really hope you never hit the typosquatters. There are more of those damned things than you might think, and they're not hard to hit.
If you want to save passwords (which one might think were in the "must save" cookies?) why not use the password manager for that?
Yeah, I know, I wish I could exempt a few cookies from the 'clear cookies' button, or at least from expiring at the end of the session like all mine do, but I guess using the password manager is more secure, anyhow.
But until the risk increases (or manifests itself to me personally) or Mozilla/FireBird get easier to use from install to every-day usage, I ain't switching.
2) Go to this site and download the latest version for your OS.
3) Find wherever you saved the file to, double click it & follow the prompts. Bam, installed.
4) Upgrade? Download new version, rename the mozilla folder to mozilla_old, install the new one, move any plug-ins from the old plug-in folder to the new one (when it says something about overwriting the one file that's in both, say 'no'), and delete the mozilla_old folder as soon as you know it all works.
It's nowhere near as hard as you might think. If you can manage WINS, you can move/delete a few files.
It's also better than having all the information on your computer exported to Nigeria, or having your PC used like a proxy while someone hacks into someplace important enough to get the Feds to knock on your door, or having your PC used to store child pornography. Don't laugh, both of these have actually happened to people; check the news...
Now then, if you need it personally demonstrated to you, I'm sure that I could find a few malware websites which are typosquatters, etc.
> The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American.
1) No it isn't. There are other nuts out there (think McVeigh, etc.) who might consider such attacks. Moreover, there are other folks who have betrayed this country and won't appear on this list simply because they're the not from one of the "terrorist" countries.
2) Any system which focuses our attention on "more suspicious" people can be abused by adversaries who plan ahead to be less secure than random searches. This has been proven mathematically; it was reported on Slashdot & elsewhere. It has also been published in reputable journals.
Thus, it is irrelevant whether the system you propose is "racist" or not--it only works to make us less safe, and is therefore should never be deployed if we want to be safer.
Our politicians may be spineless, but not implimenting this controversial and ineffective screening system is not something to complain about.
I shudder to think of a Slashdot where all the jokes about how we should send SCO $699 were considered "insightful."
The karma whores will just have to find some other way to get more karma *shrug* It's not like you won't hit the cap at excellent if you post well-reasoned thoughts with any regularity, and it's not like this was an accidental change--funny mods used to give karma, and there are plenty of us who will M2 blatant funny -> insighful conversions as "unfair."
But watch out for how much trust you put in them, how do you know they won't start doing popups etc?
Bad example. I block all pop-ups, and Google's not about to get a pass there.
I'm more worried if they sell out & data-mine all the Gmail accounts in some intrusive way. Of course, every other webmail provider could do that, too...
Didn't you read? They're planning to raise their prices.
Anyhow, I submitted something just like this, only with about a dozen links to more information (sadly, I don't have all of them here now), so perhaps I can explain more --
This motion follows IBM's motion to strike Sontag's declaration as incompetant (he doesn't know jack about IBM's internal source controls, but he made a number of wild guesses and swore to them under oath), as well as IBM's movement for a declaration of non-infringement concerning their Linux activities. It is ironic on the last part that SCO doesn't want to let them have one, and it says at the same time that they're not arguing that IBM has infringed on their copyrights now.
I'd link those motions, but I don't have time. They can all be found on Groklaw's legal documents page. Just be sure you're looking at the SCO vs. IBM part, and that you start at the bottom & scroll up--both SCO's complaint & IBM's counter-claims have changed over time, and you want the most recent version.
If they were to grant all of IBM's motions, they would be enough to rend pretty much all Linux-related issues from this case, and would leave SCO with almost nothing that could stand on its own and SCO would still face the counter-claims.
Of course, the judge has to be really strict on granting summary judgements. There have to be no material (relevant) issues of fact to decide--the evidence has to be so one-sided that no rational trier of fact could possibly decide for SCO on any of the issues the judge decides. This is important because the judge rules on the law, while the jury rules on the facts in any jury trial. If you can't guess from that, a summary judgement is where the judge gets to decide an issue early because there are no material issues of fact for a jury to decide.
In other words, though IBM's motions are well-argued, they face a *very* high standard of law here. Please note that while Enderle has said that he would decide for SCO, that's irrelevant because the trier of fact would have to be rational, and logic is not Enderle's strong suit.
Well, for them to change the license, they must have the copyright on that code (or the consent of all those who do hold copyright on it).
From then on, they can license it however they please under any license they see fit.
However, what was GPL'd *stays* GPL'd, so you can restart a fork of it with all new developers if you so choose. Also, if you have many copyright holders (e.g. as with Linux), you effectively cannot change the license, because it would probably be impossible to get the consent of enough of the copyright holders.
Log everything (especially if you know his online handle--go Google him).
Once you have something to bust him for, send those logs and a selection of others & whatever you found about him mouthing off about how he's such a great hacker from Google, then forward the lot to the ISP.
Since I don't do this very often, and I presented a credible enough case, I have a good success rate for having them booted.
They're not willing to engage in self-criticism. Thus, when anything at all gets said about Linux itself, it's positive. ---->
Perchance because posts about Linux itself are offtopic in most Groklaw articles? Thus the only reason to post them in most would be to troll.
As for criticism, PJ notes the IBM mistakes as well as the SCO ones--just today we have IBM filing errata because of a misquote of one of their declarations in one of thier filings. PJ has also owned up to any mistakes made or errata from her own, previous articles. Of course, I grant that there simply haven't been that many to own up to--most are caught early.
I guess you really have been away for a long time.
Other than that, yes, I do tend to evaluate the source of the claims. But I also validate them against those things I can readily establish (e.g. if Lyons is talking about SCO's legal claims, I compare what he says to SCO's actual legal filings).
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Sadly, Enderle, Lyons & co. have a somewhat worse track record...
Slashdot Mirror
They aren't psuedo-perpetual like copyright, they expire in 7 years, and they're more easily fought and defended.
-----
No they aren't. I agree that they expire on a somewhat more reasonable time frame (of course, as far as technology & algorithms go, even seven years is an eternity), however, at least in the US, they're rubber stamped by the USPTO and then given a legal presumption of validity. The other side has to prove they didn't infringe.
Also, coming up with an original work is no defense--you can infringe upon a patent you have never heard of before. You might get some mileage out of independent creation, in that if you're an average practitioner skilled in the art, and it was obvious to you, it probably shouldn't have been patented, but I don't know that I'd bet on it. Don't forget the legal fees, too. I'm not sure you can recover them at all, even if the lawsuit is pretty baseless.
So yes, there are plenty of things which could be fixed. Also, IANAL, I just read about this stuff a lot, so the usual disclaimers against taking this as legal advice apply.
If you read this Groklaw article, you'll see that the court made a mistake in their listings and vacated that notice of hearing.
:]
So they're not all going to meet at the same time in the same place. Pity that, it would've made quite a good show
Even fighting them one at a time, though, SCO is up the river unless they've got a few aces up their sleeves...
If you mosey on over to this Groklaw article, you'll see that Judge Kimball appears to be fixin' to have a three-way showdown--IBM & Novell vs. SCO.
If you've read the legal briefs, you should know by now that both Novell & IBM have hammered on SCO's counsel for asserting some rather convenient but inconsistant things before the judge. In other words, they assert whatever is most beneficial to their case--leaving SCO with a few more arguements, but no consistant case. While they might be able to make that slide a bit better when they're talking as two separate cases, saying different things about the two different cases while discussing them in front of the same judge can't help them any--they'll have pick a side of some of those fences they're sitting on and stick with it.
Problem is, IBM & Novell have them trapped in a narrow pass, effectively, due to some good lawyering on both of their sides. They're going to have to face the music one way or another--if they take one way out of that pass they're in, IBM will get them, whereas Novell is coming down the other side. In other words, SCO is being attacked on two fronts with no retreat, and IBM is now a bit pissed off with SCO's lawyers after the last few tricks (such as citing a Westlaw headnote without attribution, using a priviledge IBM document as an exhibit in clear violation of one of the discovery agreements with IBM, and a few other things I can't remember right now...). Marbux and AllParadox on Groklaw posted on SCO's malfeasance better than I can, and both of those two are lawyers, though they still put up a few disclaimers about not taking what they say as legal advice.
Anyhow, unless this is a mistake by the court in having them all meet up at the same in front of the same judge (possible, but doubtful), you can expect SCO to be routed--their lawyers seem harried, disorganized and ready to have their asses handed to them just as soon as IBM & Novell are done with them.
Mark your calendars, folks--if this is what it looks like, SCO is going to have one hell of a time getting out of this with anything but a ruling which further weakens them. Even if SCO has an ace up their sleeves, I'm not sure they can be holding any better than aces & eights--the dead man's hand.
I'm afraid that vouchers & this crap are the norm in class actions
Eh? How did you set things up?
I have a number of filters set up to place new emails in various folders, and then to archive them ("skip the inbox").
It most certainly DOES show me a little "Labelname (1)" or whatever by the label whenever I have new messages in them.
The only exception to this is the "Spam" label--you just have to check that one every so often, because it doesn't show such an indicator (and it's excluded from searches by default).
I did submit feedback on that point, though--I really think it should notify us even of new spam.
... it probably will.
If you read them, SCO is betting the farm on a diversion tactic to answer IBM's request for summary judgement.
Basically, they're feigning surprise that this is an issue, complaining that they need more discovery, and trying to say that they haven't had time to properly prepare for this because it could take 25,000 man hours.
Unfortunately for them, IBM responds that it's been hammering SCO on this question for over a year now (in spite of SCO sticking their heads in the sand to avoid it). Also, IBM's experts say that SCO's characterization of the times involved is ridiculous and SCO has already claimed in the media *many* times to have made these comparisons already (even though it refuses to provide them to IBM).
Worse, SCO's "experts" haven't been properly qualified, they're testifying about things they would appear to have no personal knowledge of, and as such IBM is moving to strike our large portions of their declarations, meaning that SCO wouldn't have much of an arguement left. This is especially true because SCO's Samir Gupta, the only "expert" who appears to have done any code comparisons (and I say "expert" because they give no credentials for him other than him being in the employ of SCO), has completely ignored the abstraction & filtration required by the case law (whereas IBM's properly qualified MIT professor has done one refuting theirs, which respects the case law in question).
Lastly, they point out via copious amounts of case law that SCO does *not* need any more discovery. They show that the only thing which matters for a judgement in terms of *copyright infringement* is the two final works. SCO surely has its own product line, and IBM points them to every version of Linux since 1.0, which is available online.
Taken in sum, unless SCO can pull off one hell of a miracle to convince the judge in the oral arguments, I would tend to think that SCO is screwed here. SCO's tactic of sticking its head in the sand to try and duck IBM's arguement doesn't seem very persuasive, and *SCO* has the burden of proof to show that there are material facts in dispute. Given how IBM so carefully destroys all the testamony SCO relies on, it's hard to see how SCO could prevail in any meaningful way when these motions are resolved.
Well, considering that they were once the "bad guy" company, not unlike the Microsoft of today to many here, I'd say they've turned things around quite well.
As long as they're defending open source with their lawyers, I can't imagine a sane person wanting to attack it--I've read the legal briefs, they don't miss a thing.
Excerpted from http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/506.html
Note that "financial gain" can include receiving other copyrighted works in return.
Let's see... they went in to someone's home and took their stuff.
And made no arrests.
I don't recall the gov't being able to do that before 9/11... so... I'm sure it is related somehow.
It's called a search warrant. It may give them the right to sieze all sorts of crap. Sometimes, they even write really bad ones and the government gets in trouble (see Steve Jackson Games vs. the US Secret Service, which is still an important case concerning the seizure of electronic materials, even if some of the courts holdings in it have been weakened in more recent decisions).
Erhm, I could've sworn the DMCA added some new *criminal* copyright infringement offenses, and that they're not just the anti-circumvention bits.
Of course, IANAL, so...
It's not a pyramid scheme as much as it's a "sell stuff to your friends without getting paid much" scheme.
Perhaps you should take the quiz they have here:
http://www.pyramidschemealert.org/
Next thing you know, someone will be telling us that those penis enhancement pills are legit, too, just because they advertise on TV...
What does that one commercial say?
"We said it on TV, so it must be true!"
I seem to remember a few very... interesting... statements televised by the Iraqi Information Minister, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton & Richard Nixon, too, and that's off the top of my head.
Let's start with the fundamentals: copyright (NOT "copywrite") is a monopoly for a limited time (we hope) to promote innovation.
Profits are seen as a means to this end--e.g. people will innovate more often if there's enough reward for doing so.
Fair use balances that interest in that, if your use of the material doesn't, among other things, threaten their profits, if it is educational (e.g. likely to lead to more innovation), etc., it is not seen as harmful. Thus, it is protected by the First Ammendment, which is balanced with the concerns of the copyright clause in the constitution.
So there's no fallacy in deciding whether something is really fair use simply based on profits--after all, most sensible people recognize the value of fair use. However, many of us do think that there are issues for reform, as we have shown via free & open source software (FOSS) that profit isn't the only motive whereby people are encouraged to innovate (though people can certainly profit from FOSS), and that there are thus legitimate issues on which to reform IP law to maximize it's true goal--increasing innovation (and not merely increasing profits to increase innovation).
So there's no black and white moral imperative here, and no fallacy in pointing out that, under the current scheme, increased profits are calculated to give increased innovation, making those things which substantially decrease profits more harmful than those things which do not. Granted, there's the issue of how exactly P2P applications really affect their bottom line, and I would much rather see reform, but the number of abuses really is relevant here.
This case wasn't likely to set any new precident.
What would you argue to a judge, anyhow, if you were asking them to declare that the other person shouldn't sue you if the other side had offered a settlement where they wouldn't sue you, anyhow?
Judges don't like having their time wasted, you know...
Have you ever had the pleasure of launchign an app, tellign you it has an update and it offers to upgrade for ya? You click OK, the thing downloads, installs and restarts with no user intervention?
Yes. But usually it installs useless crap or updates to things I don't use and don't want to.
There is an update notification icon which leads you to the update page in firefox, I believe. As for the rest *shrug* I only update it every few months. Moving a few files around is no big deal, especially since that procedure has been the same the whole time.
But yeah, I would like to see the installer smart enough to do that for me.
As for not clicking on links you don't trust, I really hope you never hit the typosquatters. There are more of those damned things than you might think, and they're not hard to hit.
If you want to save passwords (which one might think were in the "must save" cookies?) why not use the password manager for that?
Yeah, I know, I wish I could exempt a few cookies from the 'clear cookies' button, or at least from expiring at the end of the session like all mine do, but I guess using the password manager is more secure, anyhow.
But until the risk increases (or manifests itself to me personally) or Mozilla/FireBird get easier to use from install to every-day usage, I ain't switching.
1) Run Ad-Aware and/or Spybot Search & Destroy -- you're probably already infected and don't know it.
2) Go to this site and download the latest version for your OS.
3) Find wherever you saved the file to, double click it & follow the prompts. Bam, installed.
4) Upgrade? Download new version, rename the mozilla folder to mozilla_old, install the new one, move any plug-ins from the old plug-in folder to the new one (when it says something about overwriting the one file that's in both, say 'no'), and delete the mozilla_old folder as soon as you know it all works.
It's nowhere near as hard as you might think. If you can manage WINS, you can move/delete a few files.
It's also better than having all the information on your computer exported to Nigeria, or having your PC used like a proxy while someone hacks into someplace important enough to get the Feds to knock on your door, or having your PC used to store child pornography. Don't laugh, both of these have actually happened to people; check the news...
Now then, if you need it personally demonstrated to you, I'm sure that I could find a few malware websites which are typosquatters, etc.
> The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American.
1) No it isn't. There are other nuts out there (think McVeigh, etc.) who might consider such attacks. Moreover, there are other folks who have betrayed this country and won't appear on this list simply because they're the not from one of the "terrorist" countries.
2) Any system which focuses our attention on "more suspicious" people can be abused by adversaries who plan ahead to be less secure than random searches. This has been proven mathematically; it was reported on Slashdot & elsewhere. It has also been published in reputable journals.
Thus, it is irrelevant whether the system you propose is "racist" or not--it only works to make us less safe, and is therefore should never be deployed if we want to be safer.
Our politicians may be spineless, but not implimenting this controversial and ineffective screening system is not something to complain about.
I shudder to think of a Slashdot where all the jokes about how we should send SCO $699 were considered "insightful."
The karma whores will just have to find some other way to get more karma *shrug* It's not like you won't hit the cap at excellent if you post well-reasoned thoughts with any regularity, and it's not like this was an accidental change--funny mods used to give karma, and there are plenty of us who will M2 blatant funny -> insighful conversions as "unfair."
So, if you only buy the original 10, you're skipping the equal rights ammendment, the end of slavery and the one which gives women the right to vote!?
You're either nuts, or you should read the rest of the constitution...
But watch out for how much trust you put in them, how do you know they won't start doing popups etc?
Bad example. I block all pop-ups, and Google's not about to get a pass there.
I'm more worried if they sell out & data-mine all the Gmail accounts in some intrusive way. Of course, every other webmail provider could do that, too...
Didn't you read? They're planning to raise their prices.
Anyhow, I submitted something just like this, only with about a dozen links to more information (sadly, I don't have all of them here now), so perhaps I can explain more --
This motion follows IBM's motion to strike Sontag's declaration as incompetant (he doesn't know jack about IBM's internal source controls, but he made a number of wild guesses and swore to them under oath), as well as IBM's movement for a declaration of non-infringement concerning their Linux activities. It is ironic on the last part that SCO doesn't want to let them have one, and it says at the same time that they're not arguing that IBM has infringed on their copyrights now.
I'd link those motions, but I don't have time. They can all be found on Groklaw's legal documents page. Just be sure you're looking at the SCO vs. IBM part, and that you start at the bottom & scroll up--both SCO's complaint & IBM's counter-claims have changed over time, and you want the most recent version.
If they were to grant all of IBM's motions, they would be enough to rend pretty much all Linux-related issues from this case, and would leave SCO with almost nothing that could stand on its own and SCO would still face the counter-claims.
Of course, the judge has to be really strict on granting summary judgements. There have to be no material (relevant) issues of fact to decide--the evidence has to be so one-sided that no rational trier of fact could possibly decide for SCO on any of the issues the judge decides. This is important because the judge rules on the law, while the jury rules on the facts in any jury trial. If you can't guess from that, a summary judgement is where the judge gets to decide an issue early because there are no material issues of fact for a jury to decide.
In other words, though IBM's motions are well-argued, they face a *very* high standard of law here. Please note that while Enderle has said that he would decide for SCO, that's irrelevant because the trier of fact would have to be rational, and logic is not Enderle's strong suit.
Well, for them to change the license, they must have the copyright on that code (or the consent of all those who do hold copyright on it).
From then on, they can license it however they please under any license they see fit.
However, what was GPL'd *stays* GPL'd, so you can restart a fork of it with all new developers if you so choose. Also, if you have many copyright holders (e.g. as with Linux), you effectively cannot change the license, because it would probably be impossible to get the consent of enough of the copyright holders.
IANAL, but I've spent a lot of time reading US copyright law and Groklaw.
Been there, done that.
Log everything (especially if you know his online handle--go Google him).
Once you have something to bust him for, send those logs and a selection of others & whatever you found about him mouthing off about how he's such a great hacker from Google, then forward the lot to the ISP.
Since I don't do this very often, and I presented a credible enough case, I have a good success rate for having them booted.
They're not willing to engage in self-criticism. Thus, when anything at all gets said about Linux itself, it's positive.
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Perchance because posts about Linux itself are offtopic in most Groklaw articles? Thus the only reason to post them in most would be to troll.
As for criticism, PJ notes the IBM mistakes as well as the SCO ones--just today we have IBM filing errata because of a misquote of one of their declarations in one of thier filings. PJ has also owned up to any mistakes made or errata from her own, previous articles. Of course, I grant that there simply haven't been that many to own up to--most are caught early.
I guess you really have been away for a long time.
You forgot Daniel Lyons of Forbes.
Other than that, yes, I do tend to evaluate the source of the claims. But I also validate them against those things I can readily establish (e.g. if Lyons is talking about SCO's legal claims, I compare what he says to SCO's actual legal filings).
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Sadly, Enderle, Lyons & co. have a somewhat worse track record...