The American astronaut extols the virtues of the Space Pen, how they spent millions of dollars researching and inventing a preasurized pen that writes in space, underwater, and on just about any surface. The cosmonaut says "we use a #2 pencil most of the time, if we have to write on glass or under water, we use a grease pencil."
Further, we have recorded a bunch of these things each year (of that size), including several that have broken apart, hit the Earth, and been collected.
1-2 week iterations, very frequent reviews, iterations are fixed once started...
Sounds like you've got some experience with eXtreme Programming, or at least familiar with the principles behind it.
Personally, I've done similar things (not Free softare, but independant stuff) and that's EXACTLY what I'd put on the list. But you did forget a few things:
IMPORTANT: Make sure you contract states that any maintenence, including fixes for bugs or security flaws, be billed as a separate iteration.
In addition to the general feature list, write the acceptance tests before starting to work on the iteration, making sure that you both understand and agree to them (with signatures if trust is low). That way if the two of you ever get into a dispute, you can turn to a third party who can say "It passed the acceptance tests, the company MUST accept it." or "You aren't finished working on it."
Include in your estimates the time for debugging and for acceptance tests with the company.
Make sure that all your feature lists, acceptance tests, and other documents are clear enough that you could hand them off to another developer (if you had to) and they would know exactly what was required.
Make sure your contract does NOT require you to do the work yourself, merely that the work is accomplished. If your Uni. work starts to suffer, you would be able to give a job to some other poor undergrads ( Pay 2 people 1/3 of your pay and let them to a bunch of the work. It's better to get your diploma and have a little less money, than to have a little more money and no diploma.)
Since the courts have ruled that silence and 'nothing' can be subject to copyright, why then should white space be excempt? A truly anal company (no names, please) could simply say that an earlier derived work is still a derived work, because they preserved the copyrighted white space.
And how can you prove that you DID NOT steal the white space in your file from another company's white space? [Remember, this was fought in court when one musician claimed ownership of a few seconds worth of silence. His silence was found to be a derivative work of another artist's silence... ]
Probably not. But who cares? Z is a derivative work of Y, which was distributed under GPL, therefore Z can only be distributed under the GPL.
You missed the point. That means that Y would be a derivative of A, and therefore MUST NOT be distributed under the GPL (unless you are the original author of A through Y, in which case it doesn't matter.)
I'd say it's simple enough: the first work that contains no code from A and does not have to be linked to anything in A in order to function is not a derivative work of A.
But in that case, it would still have code from all other releases, and those were derivative works. As I read the copyright law (
The question remains, when do subsequent derived works cease to be derived works?
The law defines it as:
A ''derivative work'' is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a ''derivative work''.
It does not say anything about multiple generations of derivatives, probably because these rights have never been granted for so long. A simple search of law cases turns up nothing related to this either.
You also said:
All of this A, B, C, stuff is unnecessarily confusing. Look at it this way, the creator of this maybe-derived-maybe not work should just ask himself the following questions: [full ownership? not owner but has rights? ]
Unfortunately, rules of ownership of derived works gets a little more interesting. If the author of A revokes their earlier granted license, falls under this clause:
17 USC 2 sec 203(b)(1): A derivative work prepared under authority of the grant before its termination may continue to be utilized under the terms of the grant after its termination, but this privilege does not extend to the preparation after the termination of other derivative works based upon the copyrighted work covered by the terminated grant.
Those other works (B thorugh Y) are derivateves based on the copyrighted work. Revoking the right might be seen as effectively preventing work on product Z. That's where asking a lawyer would be interesting.
I'll take em... I could use another beowulf cluster.
Not two years ago at BYU, I was still using a cluster of P2-400's for a distributed processing system. They still have it in the lab, since it's easier to test and develop your programs on the cluster than it was to wait for a scheduling turn on the various IBM and SGI supercomputers.
I know with my laptop, and those at work, the stickers are the first thing to go.
The Intel stickers (if left on) get rubbed until it's just a big silver patch. The Windows sticker (not the registration sticker) is either removed or mutilated by various people. All but the most extreme of the service and license stickers (such as Windows XP) get rubbed to oblivion as well.
Now there will be another sticker on the laptop, and rather than it saying "recycle fee pre-paid" it will just be yet another big white blob.
if a derived work no longer happens to contain any code that was originally released under the GPL by someone else, then it is by definition not a derived work.
I've often wondered about this, and would like a lawyer to answer it someday. Let's say that there is a source work, A, that I derive from into work B. Next, I derive from work B into work C. Work C still has some of work A's stuff it it, so it is probably a derivative work. Now eventually C becomes D, D to E, until an eventual release (Z) that has NO CODE from A.
Now here is the questions:
Is product Z considered a derived work of A?
If not, at what point did it cease to be so? Was C a derived work? How about D?
Is a work that is derived from another derived work a derived work of the original, even if none of the original remains? (In derivative works, does A -> B and B -> C imply A -> C?)
It seems as tho SCO is claiming that multiple generations are still considered derived works. It seems that everybody else is claiming 'no'.
It is easy to make apocalypic claims using the A -> C definition, because all modern software uses the language's libraries, which were derived from earlier libraries (perhaps even written in another language). Wash, rinse, repeat.
In that case, the rest of your post is invalid, since obviously you would have no right to any of your code (most extreme case). If derivative works cease to be derivate only when none of the original remains, then we still have problems, since much of the C and C++ language cores would be owned and abusable. So somewhere along the line, some amout of use must be legit (and that line isn't the current "Fair Use" as coded into law).
The point is that this sort of thing is really really bad for society because of the chilling effects. If it's risky to criticize the big boys, guess what, they get less criticism than they should have on account of their actions.
Not really.
In this case, the guy published the paper on his own, and was fired "because his services were no longer needed." There is an outcry, and the guy gets thousands of job offers.
Next time sombody at @stake publishes a paper. The paper is also based on fact. The company also immediately fires them. The company has now established a pattern of firing people for doing what they are supposed to do. At this point, there would be a labor dispute (29 USC 158 c) (Employees and emplyers are free to express their views) as well as a civil dispute (18 USC 245 Sec 245(b)(5)) (Federal protection against intimidation or punishment from participating lawfully in speach or peaceful assembly), as well as probably several other laws.
Or in simpler terms, the company would have shown a pattern of unlawful practices, meaning that they would have some serious lawsuits on their hands.
In the game theory / game economy book "A Course In Game Theory" by Martin J. Osborne and Ariel Rubinstein (MIT Press), they cover this fairly in-depth.
You wouldn't normally want to kick somebody off, as you suggest, but rather punish them for their behavior in an attempt to prevent it in the future.
I seem to remember it was under 'punishing cheaters', and even had ways to fight back in 'punishing the punishers', but what you describe could be melded in with that. I thought when I read it, and still believe, that it would be interesting to have some of the more visible studios implement this type of system.
For a short game like CS or UT, keeping their handicap stored locally would probably be a good thing. Some specialized NPCs would give a good basis for comparison. Disguising the NPCs as regular players would be a little work, but do-able. Since these games are either individually competitive or group competetive, you could have a per-game 'team handicap' that is dynamically updated mid-game, and a per-player handicap that is updated at the end of each round. Even if you have extremely good or extreemly bad players on your team, the combination of the two would make both teams nearly equal. Unrated players would have to play on special 'rating servers' that would continually balance both the players and the teams until they reach a fairly steady state.
In each game, the handicaps could be normalzied so that the median-skilled player gets to have the default stats. The dynamic balancing would prevent a skilled player from playing a few rounds as a punching bag (getting their handicap set to a bonus) and then going on a sniper spree. It might send out a notice to the team "Player X on team Y is performing unusually well [or poor]. Your [or Their] team's abilities are being adjusted to keep the game balanced."
When a balancing message comes out, if the change has been extreme (probably cheating) then team might be given a chance to boot player X from the game rather than be adjusted. Otherwise, players might go help him out if he was performing poorly. If a player was doing extrememly bad, the system might give them a targeting system or aimbot or something. In either event, everybody would know that player X was a better/worse player than them, but they wouldn't care since the game would still be challenging to both sides.
As a side benefit, having dynamically balanced teams might mean that you have 9 really bad players and 1 really good player who was using an aim-bot, but it would be quickly obvious to the other 9 on the team who the cheater is. They could tag his account as a potential cheater, which would show up on the team selection screen (maybe show both a "Handicap" and "Cheater Warning Level" field, and let the other players vote to let them play.) Having the handicap level visible would let you see in advance how skilled a player is compared to the other players.
For longer games, tiers of players could face varying levels of law by an in-game police service -- you start abusing your position and you get jailed or fined. In one game, it might be okay to take advantage of people in your same class, but not below your class, or whatever social rules the game makers want. Perhaps you don't get punished immediatly, but when you get back into town, you find a sherrif, guards, knight, police-mech, or whatever, ready to meet you at the gate. It would not prevent you from these 'crimes', but it would limit your ability to do them AND stay near society. A group of these rougues could build their own towns (maybe even game-sancioned gangs) so that novice players can still enjoy the game, and if they stray to far from civilization they might fall prey to the crime rings. When they get back to the town, they can report it to the police, who will send out a posse or something. [That's the 'punishment' side] Enough gang members could beat the punishers, and even perhaps steal their stuff [punishing the punishers], but at some point,
What can they do? Did they threaten to beat Ransom Love up if he GPLed it?
You should read the line right before that statement. It says
we quickly found that even though we owned it, it was, and still is, full of other companies' copyrights.
It's fairly obvious that the old management respected copyright law and other companies' wishes, rather than believing in extortion and barraty as the ultimate business practices.
The link now goes to their 404 error page... What kind of pull does @stake have with C|Net news to make that happen?
Perhaps it is because they moved the link?
http://news.com.com/2100-1009-5082649.html is the link that works right now. Or just enter "@stake" on the search bar of their error 404 page.
If you are going to start a conspiracy theory, at least make one that stands up to a little bit of reason. Or not so easily discoverable by the public.
Having read the very short bill, I kinda-sorta agree with the dissenters.
Before I get flamed to oblivion, lets get it straight --- I HATE TELEMARKETERS. My phone numbers are on the DNC list.
While I like the fact that it will be passed, did we really need a bill that says "We authorized an action in 15 USC whatever. That law was ratified March 31 2003" ? In the future, whenever a law is being reviewed by the courts, shold congress have to pass a bill saying that they did indeed pass the laws earlier? When a department goes over budget, will we get a new bill saying "On August 12, Congress budgeted 123,456,789 to the Office of Stupidity In Government. The Budget was ratified on August 17." ?
It just seems odd to me. The original law is still being challenged, only that congress is telling the courts "Yes, we did that on purpose." The appeals court will still have to overturn the ruling. The bill is a stern message to the court, obviously, but the judge was ruling on the original law (which is unaltered by this) and stated that the law, as written, would give power to the FCC and not the FTC.
I guess I don't like the precident of Congress passing a bill that just says that they passed a bill. If the bill said something like "We acknolowedge that this power normally would be given to the FCC, but we are specifically giving it to the FTC" then I would have no mixed feelings.
frob
P.S. If the FSF naming people were in congress, (the same ones who came up with GNU and HURD as recursive acronyms) they could just start passing bills saying that they passed bills saying that they passed bills saying that they passed bills saying that...
Indeed. What would be the point in running linux on it? You buy the thing because: 1. It has extensive math capabilities, 2. it can graph said math, 3. it is more portable than matlab or mathmatica, and 4. it can be programmed for field-work mathematics.
OR you buy it because you are a student with no self esteem and want to buy the latest, coolest, most expensive looking calculator and go on an ego trip... which will last until they release one with 2 SD cards, or 1MB ROM, or a firewire port, or something else, and your friend/enemy/antagonist says "You have the 49g+? Well *I* have the 49g++, so pthhh!"
At 75 Mhz, and only 800KB of flash rom and 512KB of RAM, you'd need to really modify the OS, and probably rely heavily on an SD card.
Only a truly odd or devoted hacker would potentially break this $175 piece of hardware, with a (tiny) 131 x 80 monochrome screen and a bunch of extra buttons, just for the thrill of porting an OS. For that kind of money, the trollish-poster should get a Zaurus with a bigger, color screen, more memory, and known compatibility with Linux.
Why out of luck looking for an HP graphing calculator? The HP 49g+ was released this month, available for $160 or less if you can find it for such. Suggested retail is $175. HP is having trouble distributing them fast enough, even though they have already posted a ROM update for it.
You give a link saying HP no longer makes calculators, and in that page it says both that the partiuclar division at a particular location is closing, and also that the division is not closing.
According to HP, it never left the calculator business.
Personally, I will be getting the new 49g+ in a few months, since my 48g is dying a slow, painful death. It's available for $160 and probably cheaper if you can find it. MSRP of $176 (er, 195.99).
congress... had this very action in mind when they wrote the bill, have said afterward that this is what they intended and that they will write a new bill to clarify it in language even this dumbass and/or bought off judge will understand.
When a judge is convicted of a minor crime, potentially hundreds of cases are evaluated to see if the judge may have been biased. When a judge is convicted of major ethics violations (like bribery) there are thousands of cases that get reviewed.
If you have evidence that something this judge or any other has been "bought off", bring it forward; If you don't have evidence but are just angry, then shut up and quit spreading libel. That is a very serious accusation.
Now, moving on to the FACTS of this case:
First, it was two separate laws, not one. Second, they did not have that in the purposes of the 1991 law, but did have parts of it in the purposes of the 1994 law. Third, congress has authorized several specific powers in the acts. Go read them yourself. I did.
Just because congress indended a law to do something, the judges are to do what is actually codified in the text of the law. Judges are to evaluate two sources of data: the codified law and the facts presented, and then make a judgement based on their view of those facts. There are two separate laws here, one in 1991 and one in 1994, and both available in Cornell's law library (sorry, I didn't keep the links from earlier today.)
Now that I have had the chance to READ THE LAWS at Cornell's online law library, I agree with the judge. They have in fact been granted -- as far as the DNC list is concerned -- two separate powers. It doesn't matter what the intent was, the coded law lists two different powers. The DNC list as a ban mixes the two powers in a way not permitted by the law. Since this is something that congress, the public, and even the judge said is something that is generally good (although technically not legal) it would be trivial for Congress to pass a simple, 1 or 2 page bill authorizing the DNC list ban.
like their office and home numbers so we could call them and let them know how much we appreciate their looking out for the corporatio^H^H^H^H^H^H^H the people of the US...
The judge didn't say he agreed with their ethics, he said that the two different LAWS (ability to build a voluntary DNC list, ability to have certain calling restrictions) were not worded in such a way that allows them to be combined. I haven't taken the time to read the 1991 and 1994 laws. Knowing how laws work, unless the second specifically said it was an ammendment to the first, the judge could find that the laws don't interact.
Getting the judge's office number is easy -- just call up the courthouse. But if you did call, you will probably just get a secratery that will say that the judge makes his rulings BASED ON THE LAW.
I don't know about you, but I've already written my congress-critters and referenced the court case, asking that if the case has any merit, they need to pass a law explicitly permitting the DNC ban.
A many people who put themselves on the list "just can't say no" to telemarketers. That's why the estimtaed drop in revenue is so big.
Unfortunately, there are people in society who will just hand over a credit card number, or say "bill me later" to anybody who wants to sell them stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
The American astronaut extols the virtues of the Space Pen, how they spent millions of dollars researching and inventing a preasurized pen that writes in space, underwater, and on just about any surface. The cosmonaut says "we use a #2 pencil most of the time, if we have to write on glass or under water, we use a grease pencil."
Click on the message, and after the message is a little summary of the votes.
Further, we have recorded a bunch of these things each year (of that size), including several that have broken apart, hit the Earth, and been collected.
frob
Sounds like you've got some experience with eXtreme Programming, or at least familiar with the principles behind it.
Personally, I've done similar things (not Free softare, but independant stuff) and that's EXACTLY what I'd put on the list. But you did forget a few things:
- IMPORTANT: Make sure you contract states that any maintenence, including fixes for bugs or security flaws, be billed as a separate iteration.
- In addition to the general feature list, write the acceptance tests before starting to work on the iteration, making sure that you both understand and agree to them (with signatures if trust is low). That way if the two of you ever get into a dispute, you can turn to a third party who can say "It passed the acceptance tests, the company MUST accept it." or "You aren't finished working on it."
- Include in your estimates the time for debugging and for acceptance tests with the company.
- Make sure that all your feature lists, acceptance tests, and other documents are clear enough that you could hand them off to another developer (if you had to) and they would know exactly what was required.
- Make sure your contract does NOT require you to do the work yourself, merely that the work is accomplished. If your Uni. work starts to suffer, you would be able to give a job to some other poor undergrads ( Pay 2 people 1/3 of your pay and let them to a bunch of the work. It's better to get your diploma and have a little less money, than to have a little more money and no diploma.)
Just some thoughts.frob
Since the courts have ruled that silence and 'nothing' can be subject to copyright, why then should white space be excempt? A truly anal company (no names, please) could simply say that an earlier derived work is still a derived work, because they preserved the copyrighted white space.
And how can you prove that you DID NOT steal the white space in your file from another company's white space? [Remember, this was fought in court when one musician claimed ownership of a few seconds worth of silence. His silence was found to be a derivative work of another artist's silence... ]
The question remains, when do subsequent derived works cease to be derived works? The law defines it as:
It does not say anything about multiple generations of derivatives, probably because these rights have never been granted for so long. A simple search of law cases turns up nothing related to this either.You also said:
Unfortunately, rules of ownership of derived works gets a little more interesting. If the author of A revokes their earlier granted license, falls under this clause: Those other works (B thorugh Y) are derivateves based on the copyrighted work. Revoking the right might be seen as effectively preventing work on product Z. That's where asking a lawyer would be interesting.frob
The Intel stickers (if left on) get rubbed until it's just a big silver patch. The Windows sticker (not the registration sticker) is either removed or mutilated by various people. All but the most extreme of the service and license stickers (such as Windows XP) get rubbed to oblivion as well.
Now there will be another sticker on the laptop, and rather than it saying "recycle fee pre-paid" it will just be yet another big white blob.
frob
Now here is the questions:
- Is product Z considered a derived work of A?
- If not, at what point did it cease to be so? Was C a derived work? How about D?
- Is a work that is derived from another derived work a derived work of the original, even if none of the original remains? (In derivative works, does A -> B and B -> C imply A -> C?)
It seems as tho SCO is claiming that multiple generations are still considered derived works. It seems that everybody else is claiming 'no'.It is easy to make apocalypic claims using the A -> C definition, because all modern software uses the language's libraries, which were derived from earlier libraries (perhaps even written in another language). Wash, rinse, repeat.
In that case, the rest of your post is invalid, since obviously you would have no right to any of your code (most extreme case). If derivative works cease to be derivate only when none of the original remains, then we still have problems, since much of the C and C++ language cores would be owned and abusable. So somewhere along the line, some amout of use must be legit (and that line isn't the current "Fair Use" as coded into law).
frob
In this case, the guy published the paper on his own, and was fired "because his services were no longer needed." There is an outcry, and the guy gets thousands of job offers.
Next time sombody at @stake publishes a paper. The paper is also based on fact. The company also immediately fires them. The company has now established a pattern of firing people for doing what they are supposed to do. At this point, there would be a labor dispute (29 USC 158 c) (Employees and emplyers are free to express their views) as well as a civil dispute (18 USC 245 Sec 245(b)(5)) (Federal protection against intimidation or punishment from participating lawfully in speach or peaceful assembly), as well as probably several other laws.
Or in simpler terms, the company would have shown a pattern of unlawful practices, meaning that they would have some serious lawsuits on their hands.
frob
You wouldn't normally want to kick somebody off, as you suggest, but rather punish them for their behavior in an attempt to prevent it in the future.
I seem to remember it was under 'punishing cheaters', and even had ways to fight back in 'punishing the punishers', but what you describe could be melded in with that. I thought when I read it, and still believe, that it would be interesting to have some of the more visible studios implement this type of system.
For a short game like CS or UT, keeping their handicap stored locally would probably be a good thing. Some specialized NPCs would give a good basis for comparison. Disguising the NPCs as regular players would be a little work, but do-able. Since these games are either individually competitive or group competetive, you could have a per-game 'team handicap' that is dynamically updated mid-game, and a per-player handicap that is updated at the end of each round. Even if you have extremely good or extreemly bad players on your team, the combination of the two would make both teams nearly equal. Unrated players would have to play on special 'rating servers' that would continually balance both the players and the teams until they reach a fairly steady state.
In each game, the handicaps could be normalzied so that the median-skilled player gets to have the default stats. The dynamic balancing would prevent a skilled player from playing a few rounds as a punching bag (getting their handicap set to a bonus) and then going on a sniper spree. It might send out a notice to the team "Player X on team Y is performing unusually well [or poor]. Your [or Their] team's abilities are being adjusted to keep the game balanced."
When a balancing message comes out, if the change has been extreme (probably cheating) then team might be given a chance to boot player X from the game rather than be adjusted. Otherwise, players might go help him out if he was performing poorly. If a player was doing extrememly bad, the system might give them a targeting system or aimbot or something. In either event, everybody would know that player X was a better/worse player than them, but they wouldn't care since the game would still be challenging to both sides.
As a side benefit, having dynamically balanced teams might mean that you have 9 really bad players and 1 really good player who was using an aim-bot, but it would be quickly obvious to the other 9 on the team who the cheater is. They could tag his account as a potential cheater, which would show up on the team selection screen (maybe show both a "Handicap" and "Cheater Warning Level" field, and let the other players vote to let them play.) Having the handicap level visible would let you see in advance how skilled a player is compared to the other players.
For longer games, tiers of players could face varying levels of law by an in-game police service -- you start abusing your position and you get jailed or fined. In one game, it might be okay to take advantage of people in your same class, but not below your class, or whatever social rules the game makers want. Perhaps you don't get punished immediatly, but when you get back into town, you find a sherrif, guards, knight, police-mech, or whatever, ready to meet you at the gate. It would not prevent you from these 'crimes', but it would limit your ability to do them AND stay near society. A group of these rougues could build their own towns (maybe even game-sancioned gangs) so that novice players can still enjoy the game, and if they stray to far from civilization they might fall prey to the crime rings. When they get back to the town, they can report it to the police, who will send out a posse or something. [That's the 'punishment' side] Enough gang members could beat the punishers, and even perhaps steal their stuff [punishing the punishers], but at some point,
frob
It's fairly obvious that the old management respected copyright law and other companies' wishes, rather than believing in extortion and barraty as the ultimate business practices.
frob
If you are going to start a conspiracy theory, at least make one that stands up to a little bit of reason. Or not so easily discoverable by the public.
frob
Before I get flamed to oblivion, lets get it straight --- I HATE TELEMARKETERS . My phone numbers are on the DNC list.
While I like the fact that it will be passed, did we really need a bill that says "We authorized an action in 15 USC whatever. That law was ratified March 31 2003" ? In the future, whenever a law is being reviewed by the courts, shold congress have to pass a bill saying that they did indeed pass the laws earlier? When a department goes over budget, will we get a new bill saying "On August 12, Congress budgeted 123,456,789 to the Office of Stupidity In Government. The Budget was ratified on August 17." ?
It just seems odd to me. The original law is still being challenged, only that congress is telling the courts "Yes, we did that on purpose." The appeals court will still have to overturn the ruling. The bill is a stern message to the court, obviously, but the judge was ruling on the original law (which is unaltered by this) and stated that the law, as written, would give power to the FCC and not the FTC.
I guess I don't like the precident of Congress passing a bill that just says that they passed a bill. If the bill said something like "We acknolowedge that this power normally would be given to the FCC, but we are specifically giving it to the FTC" then I would have no mixed feelings.
frob
P.S. If the FSF naming people were in congress, (the same ones who came up with GNU and HURD as recursive acronyms) they could just start passing bills saying that they passed bills saying that they passed bills saying that they passed bills saying that...
- Too much white space
- abuse of the allowed HTML elements
- short, ALL CAPS subjects, or high percentage of post in caps
- odd punctuation (too many exclamation points, for example)
- very short posts (such as "First Post!")
- posting too quickly (/. has a 2-minute manditory delay between posts)
- filters for known bad sources / known bad phrases
- filters for unknown symbols (including the Euro and other currencies, which is a frequent complaint)
slashcode has even more customizablity for filtering, butfrob
OR you buy it because you are a student with no self esteem and want to buy the latest, coolest, most expensive looking calculator and go on an ego trip... which will last until they release one with 2 SD cards, or 1MB ROM, or a firewire port, or something else, and your friend/enemy/antagonist says "You have the 49g+? Well *I* have the 49g++, so pthhh!"
At 75 Mhz, and only 800KB of flash rom and 512KB of RAM, you'd need to really modify the OS, and probably rely heavily on an SD card. Only a truly odd or devoted hacker would potentially break this $175 piece of hardware, with a (tiny) 131 x 80 monochrome screen and a bunch of extra buttons, just for the thrill of porting an OS. For that kind of money, the trollish-poster should get a Zaurus with a bigger, color screen, more memory, and known compatibility with Linux.
frob
Why out of luck looking for an HP graphing calculator? The HP 49g+ was released this month, available for $160 or less if you can find it for such. Suggested retail is $175. HP is having trouble distributing them fast enough, even though they have already posted a ROM update for it.
But if you look at the home page for your link, you see a big correction to that article... HP is back in the calculator business .
According to HP, it never left the calculator business.
Personally, I will be getting the new 49g+ in a few months, since my 48g is dying a slow, painful death. It's available for $160 and probably cheaper if you can find it. MSRP of $176 (er, 195.99).
frob
Accusing a judge of being "bought off" is a very serious thing. Your first post was an outright accusation, but this one is toned down allowing for the possibility of being a 'dumbass'. While the actual course of action varies based on the area, accepting money or services from a pending case is a serious ethics violation covered by federal and state laws. If there is enough evidence that a judge might have been "bought off", they are immediately impeached and placed on suspension, no questions asked. Both laywers and judges (who are former-lawyers) are subject to federal ethics rules, the ABA Code of Professional Responsibility, the ABA Rules of Professional Conduct, separate state codes of ethics, and in many states, ethics rules written into state statutes. When a judge commits an ethics violation it makes national news.
When a judge is convicted of a minor crime, potentially hundreds of cases are evaluated to see if the judge may have been biased. When a judge is convicted of major ethics violations (like bribery) there are thousands of cases that get reviewed.
If you have evidence that something this judge or any other has been "bought off", bring it forward; If you don't have evidence but are just angry, then shut up and quit spreading libel. That is a very serious accusation.
Now, moving on to the FACTS of this case:
First, it was two separate laws, not one. Second, they did not have that in the purposes of the 1991 law, but did have parts of it in the purposes of the 1994 law. Third, congress has authorized several specific powers in the acts. Go read them yourself. I did.
Just because congress indended a law to do something, the judges are to do what is actually codified in the text of the law. Judges are to evaluate two sources of data: the codified law and the facts presented, and then make a judgement based on their view of those facts. There are two separate laws here, one in 1991 and one in 1994, and both available in Cornell's law library (sorry, I didn't keep the links from earlier today.)
Now that I have had the chance to READ THE LAWS at Cornell's online law library, I agree with the judge. They have in fact been granted -- as far as the DNC list is concerned -- two separate powers. It doesn't matter what the intent was, the coded law lists two different powers. The DNC list as a ban mixes the two powers in a way not permitted by the law. Since this is something that congress, the public, and even the judge said is something that is generally good (although technically not legal) it would be trivial for Congress to pass a simple, 1 or 2 page bill authorizing the DNC list ban.
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Getting the judge's office number is easy -- just call up the courthouse. But if you did call, you will probably just get a secratery that will say that the judge makes his rulings BASED ON THE LAW.
I don't know about you, but I've already written my congress-critters and referenced the court case, asking that if the case has any merit, they need to pass a law explicitly permitting the DNC ban.
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Unfortunately, there are people in society who will just hand over a credit card number, or say "bill me later" to anybody who wants to sell them stuff.
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