...those controllers tend to wear out pretty quickly. Maybe MS did a study and decided they'd be missing out on a lot of long-range profits if they let other people sell controllers. Maybe they don't want the price of controllers driven down by competition...
*or* maybe they're just thinking in the short term, and some middle manager in a mid-life crisis somewhere thinks he's oh so great because he can Bend Consumers To His Will.
After all, look what clones did for the PC market... but also remember, IBM isn't selling them anymore. Still, it's *controllers* for heaven's sake, not entire consoles! Oh well, I guess we'll see programmable USB packet editors showing up pretty soon (that could be pretty cool anyway.:-)
Anyway, I've strayed off topic from your off topic post.:-) Back to the original question, they count PC sales (and probably motherboards, etc. too) so yes all our Linux/FreeBSD/whatever home built computers are counted in the piracy figures. Also, I know MS OEM license agreements won't let companies that sell Windows sell blank computers because "they're sure to pirate Windows." MS has recently started charging for Visual Studio along with MSDN because "everyone who buys MSDN will use Visual Studio, so we might as well charge them for it." Etc.
There is no reason to be distributing warez, and if they have evidence that you are, then they have a legal right to seize the computer as evidence.
I agree with the sentiment to some extent. My point was that they're overdoing it. I mean, why take the whole computer (motherboard, case, power supply, processor, heat sink, cd-rom, keyboard, monitor, etc.) when all they actually need is the hard drives? IMO, that's like saying, "OK, we found you had drugs in your car. So in addition to taking the drugs and your car, we're going to take your garage, toolshed, vacuum cleaner, and all your other cars too!" There isn't enough requirement for evidence, as someone else in this thread pointed out. The process is too open to abuse. And the powers that be have no motivation to change their behavior or self-police, after all, it's useful as an intimidation tactic, and we want to Intimidate Criminals.
Plus, what if it wasn't warez? What if it was sharing some MP3's with a couple of friends? (granted, the people that get caught tend to be bandwidth hogging and posting their services all over Usenet, but from what I can tell, the anti-piracy crowd likes to encourage people to narc on each other too.) That's much more borderline, yet I could still see the FBI raiding dorm rooms for it.
If it is found that something illegal was being done with the property, then you will not get it back, but then again you were doing something illegal with it, and should have thought about it.
Don't forget about the 18 month intermediate period where they're holding it, or where some bureaucrat decided it would make a nice present for his daughter and "lost" it.
What ever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" I guess that went out of vogue with unrigged jury trials and fair courts...
You're right, he shouldn't have to turn the stock over to Nintendo. What the heck do they have to do with it? Are they some kind of governmental body or NGO? I mean, *he bought and paid for the units.*
Originally, there was precedent for banks seizing property if you didn't pay them, because, let's face it, you owed them money. This was similar to your neighbor coming and beating you up because you borrowed his club and didn't give it back. There was also precedent for governmental agencies (e.g. tax collectors) seizing property, for much the same reason.
Then, in the 1800's, the US got into "eminent domain." Basically, this means if the state doesn't agree with how you're using some land/property, they can seize it. But note, now for the first time it wasn't "theirs anyway," they're just flat out taking it.
...take a little step through seizing illegal drugs, etc...
and we wind up in the state we have nowadays, where college dorm rooms are routinely raided for computers. I mean, these are people in *college* for crying out loud! Can they really afford to replace their computers? If the FBI wants to take the warez ("illegal materials") or mp3's, shouldn't they just take the hard drives, give the seizee (I think I just invented a new word) a new equivalent capacity or value hard drive, and *oh* -- make sure to give them a copy of the OS too, since you wouldn't want them pirating Windows, which they will obviously do since you just gave them a new, blank hard drive, and that's how we count pirates! Oh, I forgot, it's the secret po^W^WFBI, and you're a Suspected Criminal, so that means all your base are belong to us! Welcome to the land of the free, biotch!
So obviously, IMO, having *anyone* seizing property because of an *alleged* violation of the DMCA is just way over the top.
Oops, my bad, it wasLotus vs. Borland. (That explains why I couldn't find it on Google!) I was confusing it with Apple vs. Microsoft, 'cause they were both look and feel cases.
--- Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
Just when it looks like the US might be realizing it's gone overboard with copyright and patent law, now here's a proposal to have the EU copy everything that's gone wrong with US IP law.
I thought originally patents were supposed to cover mechanisms. In the loose sense of the word, I suppose an algorithm is a mechanism, but *not* like Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, for crying out loud! In early landmark cases like Apple vs. Franklin (1983; Apple sued Franklin Computer for copying the ROM's on the Apple II+ directly to make a clone), the courts applied *copyright law*, not *patent law*. (Apparently you can only get a patent on generic ROM chips, not on ROM chips programmed a specific way.) The court used the (at the time) new Copyright Act of 1976 (which IMHO was much more reasonable than the DMCA is now!) to frame their decision. Unfortunately, the Lotus 123 case (Lotus vs. Microsoft), the Pentium name trademark case, and the Apple vs. Microsoft case, the courts significantly eroded copyright's ability to provide meaningful protection to software. So I think that's why companies have turned to software patents, because legally speaking, they're much more intractable. (Although there was obviously prior art for ripping off people through patents, e.g. LZW compression which *wasn't even original* (it was a derivative of the earlier LZ compression), yet was awarded a software patent.
Anyway, this is unfortunate, but it doesn't surprise me that the BSA would be pushing software patents. After all, they're the same people who estimate "sales lost to piracy" by counting the number of PC's sold without Windows and Office and ASSUMING that everyone having one of those PC's (a) really *is* running Windows and Office, they just pirated it, (b) would have paid for it to begin with. Plus they send threatening letters to companies telling them that "the BSA police might come knocking on their door," while simultaneously telling disgruntled employees to turn in their employers. Nothing like a little backstabbing to make our lives easier, eh. Oh well, the world is full of scumbags. Just my $0.02.
--- Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
That's interesting, because AFAIK MSIE still doesn't support Digest authentication for WebDAV shares (a.k.a. "Web Folders"). (At least, IE5.5 doesn't, and IIRC neither does IE6). It seems to get confused and try to access the site using FrontPage extensions instead, which of course doesn't work because it's running Apache 2.0. That makes it hard to interoperate MSIE with other WebDAV products (like Subversion), at least if you're using Digest auth. I'm glad to see at least someone is actually trying to implement web standards, instead of mixing them together with proprietary stuff. Anyway, just my $0.02.
--- Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
That argument would only be valid if Palm thought suing Microsoft would distract them. Seriously, how many people do you think Microsoft is going to devote to this case, compared to their overall number of employees? Now if *everyone* sued them over things like this, it would work. ("Everyone" = "a large number of companies.") The death of a thousand cuts! Woohoo!!! But I don't think that's going to happen, unfortunately. ---
As far as I'm concerned, I'd be happy if the purpose was to drag Microsoft's name through the mud yet more. The more bad publicity they get, the better, IMHO. Maybe one of these days technically illiterate people will stop telling me how wonderful Microsoft is and how they've innovated *so* *much* and how they're the foundation of the American economy, blah blah blah. I hope. ---
No way man, MS has so much money there's no way they're going to run out just from getting sued. I mean, they've been in multiple simultaneous court cases since the early 90's and they're still in the black! The only way to win is technical superiority (which Linux has), PLUS mindshare superiority (which Linux doesn't have, yet.) Besides, who wants the american lawsuit industry to thrive?:) ---
Is someone finally paying attention to the fact that Microsoft's OEM license agreements don't allow vendors to install multiple operating systems? Amazing!
I doubt the courts will do anything about it though; they seem willing enough to uphold trivial patents and ROT13 encryption under the Disney Millenium Copyright Act. But hey, it's worth a shot... Go Be! ---
Slashdot Mirror
...those controllers tend to wear out pretty quickly. Maybe MS did a study and decided they'd be missing out on a lot of long-range profits if they let other people sell controllers. Maybe they don't want the price of controllers driven down by competition...
*or* maybe they're just thinking in the short term, and some middle manager in a mid-life crisis somewhere thinks he's oh so great because he can Bend Consumers To His Will.
After all, look what clones did for the PC market... but also remember, IBM isn't selling them anymore. Still, it's *controllers* for heaven's sake, not entire consoles! Oh well, I guess we'll see programmable USB packet editors showing up pretty soon (that could be pretty cool anyway. :-)
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
Actually, I don't think the BSA counts hard drives per se, but their method for estimating piracy (as of May 2001) was (essentially) to count the number of PC's shipped, then compare the number of applications they *think* will be installed per PC to the (number shipped pre-installed + number bought in stores). (See especially pages 8-9 in the PDF file.) People have been complaining about this for a while, but it's the BSA's stated position not to back down (since that would lead to lower piracy figures and less public outcry).
The BSA claims to have "softened" since the 1997 article, but I doubt it, considering that a year ago they were still sending out anti-piracy letters threatening clandestine raids, etc. Microsoft was helping them, and people were complaining about it. They basically pick random companies, threaten to sue them out of existence, and simultaneously try to get employees to turn them in. I doubt much has changed since then.
Anyway, I've strayed off topic from your off topic post. :-) Back to the original question, they count PC sales (and probably motherboards, etc. too) so yes all our Linux/FreeBSD/whatever home built computers are counted in the piracy figures. Also, I know MS OEM license agreements won't let companies that sell Windows sell blank computers because "they're sure to pirate Windows." MS has recently started charging for Visual Studio along with MSDN because "everyone who buys MSDN will use Visual Studio, so we might as well charge them for it." Etc.
I'd like to thank my good friend google for helping me along with this post. :-)
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
-
-
---There is no reason to be distributing warez, and if they have evidence that you are, then they have a legal right to seize the computer as evidence.
I agree with the sentiment to some extent. My point was that they're overdoing it. I mean, why take the whole computer (motherboard, case, power supply, processor, heat sink, cd-rom, keyboard, monitor, etc.) when all they actually need is the hard drives? IMO, that's like saying, "OK, we found you had drugs in your car. So in addition to taking the drugs and your car, we're going to take your garage, toolshed, vacuum cleaner, and all your other cars too!" There isn't enough requirement for evidence, as someone else in this thread pointed out. The process is too open to abuse. And the powers that be have no motivation to change their behavior or self-police, after all, it's useful as an intimidation tactic, and we want to Intimidate Criminals.
Plus, what if it wasn't warez? What if it was sharing some MP3's with a couple of friends? (granted, the people that get caught tend to be bandwidth hogging and posting their services all over Usenet, but from what I can tell, the anti-piracy crowd likes to encourage people to narc on each other too.) That's much more borderline, yet I could still see the FBI raiding dorm rooms for it.
If it is found that something illegal was being done with the property, then you will not get it back, but then again you were doing something illegal with it, and should have thought about it.
Don't forget about the 18 month intermediate period where they're holding it, or where some bureaucrat decided it would make a nice present for his daughter and "lost" it.
What ever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" I guess that went out of vogue with unrigged jury trials and fair courts...
Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
How is the parent post flamebait?
You're right, he shouldn't have to turn the stock over to Nintendo. What the heck do they have to do with it? Are they some kind of governmental body or NGO? I mean, *he bought and paid for the units.*
Originally, there was precedent for banks seizing property if you didn't pay them, because, let's face it, you owed them money. This was similar to your neighbor coming and beating you up because you borrowed his club and didn't give it back. There was also precedent for governmental agencies (e.g. tax collectors) seizing property, for much the same reason.
Then, in the 1800's, the US got into "eminent domain." Basically, this means if the state doesn't agree with how you're using some land/property, they can seize it. But note, now for the first time it wasn't "theirs anyway," they're just flat out taking it.
...take a little step through seizing illegal drugs, etc...
and we wind up in the state we have nowadays, where college dorm rooms are routinely raided for computers. I mean, these are people in *college* for crying out loud! Can they really afford to replace their computers? If the FBI wants to take the warez ("illegal materials") or mp3's, shouldn't they just take the hard drives, give the seizee (I think I just invented a new word) a new equivalent capacity or value hard drive, and *oh* -- make sure to give them a copy of the OS too, since you wouldn't want them pirating Windows, which they will obviously do since you just gave them a new, blank hard drive, and that's how we count pirates! Oh, I forgot, it's the secret po^W^WFBI, and you're a Suspected Criminal, so that means all your base are belong to us! Welcome to the land of the free, biotch!
So obviously, IMO, having *anyone* seizing property because of an *alleged* violation of the DMCA is just way over the top.
---
Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
Oops, my bad, it was Lotus vs. Borland. (That explains why I couldn't find it on Google!) I was confusing it with Apple vs. Microsoft, 'cause they were both look and feel cases.
---
Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
Just when it looks like the US might be realizing it's gone overboard with copyright and patent law, now here's a proposal to have the EU copy everything that's gone wrong with US IP law.
I thought originally patents were supposed to cover mechanisms. In the loose sense of the word, I suppose an algorithm is a mechanism, but *not* like Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, for crying out loud! In early landmark cases like Apple vs. Franklin (1983; Apple sued Franklin Computer for copying the ROM's on the Apple II+ directly to make a clone), the courts applied *copyright law*, not *patent law*. (Apparently you can only get a patent on generic ROM chips, not on ROM chips programmed a specific way.) The court used the (at the time) new Copyright Act of 1976 (which IMHO was much more reasonable than the DMCA is now!) to frame their decision. Unfortunately, the Lotus 123 case (Lotus vs. Microsoft), the Pentium name trademark case, and the Apple vs. Microsoft case, the courts significantly eroded copyright's ability to provide meaningful protection to software. So I think that's why companies have turned to software patents, because legally speaking, they're much more intractable. (Although there was obviously prior art for ripping off people through patents, e.g. LZW compression which *wasn't even original* (it was a derivative of the earlier LZ compression), yet was awarded a software patent.
Anyway, this is unfortunate, but it doesn't surprise me that the BSA would be pushing software patents. After all, they're the same people who estimate "sales lost to piracy" by counting the number of PC's sold without Windows and Office and ASSUMING that everyone having one of those PC's (a) really *is* running Windows and Office, they just pirated it, (b) would have paid for it to begin with. Plus they send threatening letters to companies telling them that "the BSA police might come knocking on their door," while simultaneously telling disgruntled employees to turn in their employers. Nothing like a little backstabbing to make our lives easier, eh. Oh well, the world is full of scumbags. Just my $0.02.
---
Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
8.WebDAV support for Digest authentication
That's interesting, because AFAIK MSIE still doesn't support Digest authentication for WebDAV shares (a.k.a. "Web Folders"). (At least, IE5.5 doesn't, and IIRC neither does IE6). It seems to get confused and try to access the site using FrontPage extensions instead, which of course doesn't work because it's running Apache 2.0. That makes it hard to interoperate MSIE with other WebDAV products (like Subversion), at least if you're using Digest auth. I'm glad to see at least someone is actually trying to implement web standards, instead of mixing them together with proprietary stuff. Anyway, just my $0.02.
---
Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
I think I'm going to buy a dual-processor Mac tomorrow.
Moderation Totals:Stupid=1, Macs Suck=1, Offtopic=24, Total=26
---That argument would only be valid if Palm thought suing Microsoft would distract them. Seriously, how many people do you think Microsoft is going to devote to this case, compared to their overall number of employees? Now if *everyone* sued them over things like this, it would work. ("Everyone" = "a large number of companies.") The death of a thousand cuts! Woohoo!!! But I don't think that's going to happen, unfortunately.
---
As far as I'm concerned, I'd be happy if the purpose was to drag Microsoft's name through the mud yet more. The more bad publicity they get, the better, IMHO. Maybe one of these days technically illiterate people will stop telling me how wonderful Microsoft is and how they've innovated *so* *much* and how they're the foundation of the American economy, blah blah blah. I hope.
---
No way man, MS has so much money there's no way they're going to run out just from getting sued. I mean, they've been in multiple simultaneous court cases since the early 90's and they're still in the black! The only way to win is technical superiority (which Linux has), PLUS mindshare superiority (which Linux doesn't have, yet.) Besides, who wants the american lawsuit industry to thrive? :)
---
Is someone finally paying attention to the fact that Microsoft's OEM license agreements don't allow vendors to install multiple operating systems? Amazing!
I doubt the courts will do anything about it though; they seem willing enough to uphold trivial patents and ROT13 encryption under the Disney Millenium Copyright Act. But hey, it's worth a shot... Go Be!
---
For some reason, when I first saw the headline I thought it said "water balloons." Doh!
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Maybe this will delay the spread of those pesky VB cell phone viruses?
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that way we know the thing will be secure. (*wipes sweat off brow.*) Otherwise, who knows?
---