How about print out a receipt for each voter with a unique number identifying their ballot and the votes they did encoded or just on it. Distribute the vote data on the web. Each voter could then download it and see their votes, as well as total all the votes and summarize any way they want to make sure the counts are correct. As an individual, I'd like to be able to count the votes myself (with a computer program), and to see that my vote was actually there and was counted. The way the system works now, we don't know if our vote is ever counted. We trust the machines to count correctly and the workers to report the numbers correctly. I just shove my ballot in a box and take it for granted. Also the people running the polling station could pretty easily fill out a bunch of ballots themselves and stuff them in, I don't think there's really anything stopping them. The only thing may be that I believe representatives from each party are there and they would watch each other, but what if one is corrupt?
The only problem would be that people might be forced to vote a certain way, either paid to do so or blackmailed. Maybe someone's boss would ask to see their voter receipt and look up how they voted, then fire them if they voted for the a candidate he dissapproves of. We could make penalties in the law for that though...
He talks about this in his declaration under section 12, Methodology. Abstraction and Filtration are two things that would rule out code. They are meant to filter out parts of the code that are not protectable under copyright (public domain code, scenes a faire, etc.). If the comparison provided matches that were indeed similar, abstration and filtration could be used to show that although they were the same, they were not protectable. Everything must pass the comparison test though, so by doing this he was casting a wide net to find any similar code.
24. For purposes of my review, I did not first apply the "abstraction" and filtration" analyses to the Unix System V Code. Instead, to be conservative, I assumed that all of the Unix System V code was in fact protectable (although I do not believe all of such code in fact to be protectable) and proceeded to compare all of the Unix System V Code with all of the IBM Code to see if there were any true matches of copied code in the first place. To the extent necessary, I then applied the "filtration" analysis to the reportedly matching code to determine if such code was in fact protectable.
Well actually yes they are. They currently have complete control of the U.S. government with the exception of the courts which take longer to stack.
Well actually, no they aren't. They are elected officials. We are not a monarchy, we don't appoint our leaders.
They have declared a policy of preemptive warfare which means any nation that crosses the U.S. is a now a potential military target,
If you're talking about Afghanistan, that wasn't preemptive. The government aided terrorists and the attack on American soil was carried out by agents of that government and those it supported, after the US had helped them remain free from Russian control, including the right to keep their religion (something they wouldn't be allowed under communist rule).
If you're talking about Iraq, you're partly right. I don't think we should have invaded Iraq. Of course the first war was not preemptive, we and the rest of the world were liberating Kuwait. We obviously didn't have enough evidence to conclude that Saddam was going to use a weapon of mass distruction. Even though he agreed to let UN inspectors make sure he wasn't doing anything, he thwarted them every step of the way for a decade. Sometimes when they would go to inspect a building, they would be stopped and see truckloads of stuff being taken out of the back. We should have put less faith in the intelligence of our own CIA and the organizations of the British and Russians, apparently they were all wrong. Even though Saddam wishes he would wipe America off the map, I don't think we should have invaded Iraq. That is one of the reasons I will not be voting for Bush come November.
The Feds and the city of New York both, run by Republican's are arresting people for nothing more than peaceful protest, you can now be stopped on the street or in a subway station and searched without cause. The Republican's, with Democrat collusion, through the Patriot Act have given themselves the right to see what you read at the library, and arrest a Librarian for not keeping this intrusion secret, or to engage in sneak and peak invasions of your home where they will break and enter to get in to your home, rumage through your things and don't have to show you the warrant or tell you they were there.
I'm against the patriot act. Many congressmen rushed to sign it before they even read it. What a disingenuous name. It seems to imply that if you value liberty that you are not a patriot. Try telling that to the founding fathers.
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel."
-- Patrick Henry
"The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power."
-- Daniel Webster
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin
You may recall George's brother Jeb engaged in a campaign to purge Black felons from Florida's voting roles in 2000. They probably wrongfully purged enough innocent blacks to swing the election. A prominent case was a black minister whose name sort of resembled a felon's.
That is horrible and needs more investigating. I don't think it's innappropriate to deny felons the right to vote. Our rights can be taken away by due process of law, as their's were when they were incarcerated and now denied the vote. Specifically targetting certain felons and having non-felons appear on the list is outrageous though, even if it could be cleared up with a simple phone call. If they were specifically targetting democrats and there is any proof, I think all those involved, including Jeb if he was, should go to jail.
You just need to look some of the Republican parties leading Southern luminaries. Halley Barbour, Trent Lott and Bob Barr have all been linked to segragationists
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
I see your point. However, most of the ACLU's letter and the comments here are tilted towards why it is OK to post such a list. The first ammendment guarantees the rights of people to speak up. It doesn't grant the right for groups to organize and harass people for their party affiliation and to attempt to disrupt the speech of others.
And there's also a quote from them:
Beeson said she found it ironic that the Secret Service subpoena said that the men were sought in connection with an investigation of voter intimidation. "The only intimidation taking place here is the Secret Service intimidating people who speak out against the government," she said.
The people that posted the list and the ones that will undoubtedly use it to harass the delegates aren't interested in speaking on their own views, they are interested in suppressing the views of others. Stopping this intimidation and harassment would actually be a boon to free speech, not a hinderance.
I may just send in my renewal though... I don't always agree with the people the ACLU defend, but if the most guilty and underserving of us can be abused by the government, it may not be long before we're all at risk. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
I'd like to know more about the criminal investigation that is underway. Of course the Justice Department isn't doing anything, they don't regularly go after police officers that are doing their jobs and investigating a crime. You make it sound like there's no real criminal suspicion, but that this is just being done to harass black voters. I sincerely doubt this is the case.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if I were I might be questioning those "voting leagues" too. From what I've gathered, it appears they go into people's houses and get them to send in an absentee balot. I don't think I'd like people coming to my door and giving me a ballot to sign then mailing it for me.
Now keep in mind this is just what some conspiracy nut might think. Sounds like the "get out the vote" campaign by the Democrats in NY where they rounded up bums and took them to the pools and gave them cigarettes to vote Democrat.
As for this being an abuse of the Justice Department, go ahead and look up an individual's name if you want to. Putting all their names on a public website with the express intent of harassing them is probably a criminal act. Why do you think the names are posted? Here are some quotes from the site:
Objectives: - Supply anti-RNC groups with data on the delegates to use in whatever way they see fit. [wonder what that's supposed to mean...]
At the 2004 Republican National Convention, the self-appointed managers of the world will be discussing their party platform of racism, imperialism and the violent suppression of human liberty. They will proudly renominate the unelected president of an illegitimate government.
Just got my ACLU membership renewal in the mail and I won't be re-upping. I'm all for freedom of speech and the press. However, I'm also for the right to privacy. I can't understand why the ACLU will fight for a guy that doesn't want to give his identification just to travel on a plane (which I agree with) yet protect these people whose sole intent is to harass people involved in our democratic process. If you don't think this is intended as harassment, read the web page:
At the 2004 Republican National Convention, the self-appointed managers of the world will be discussing their party platform of racism, imperialism and the violent suppression of human liberty. They will proudly renominate the unelected president of an illegitimate government.
And here are their objectives:
Our objectives are to:
- Supply anti-RNC groups with data on the delegates to use in whatever way they see fit.
- Supply a body of information that can be easily added to.
- Encourage the republishing and redistribution of this data.
- Facilitate making local connections. Many of these delegates are involved in politics and business on a town or county level.
And the comment at the end says it all:
Shut down the RNC!
Hello, these aren't the self-appointed managers of the world any more than the DNC delegates were. What exactly leads you to believe the republican party has a "platform of racisism"? The fact that they don't want white (and black) Americans to pay for the sins of some of their great-great-great grandfathers with reparations? The fact that they believe that getting a job should be based on merit and not the color of one's skin?
The fiasco in Florida was sad, but Bush was elected by the rules that we have in place. I have a hard time believing that nearly 100% of the hanging chads were votes for Gore. I thought the fiasco afterwards where Gore's vote count kept rising but Bush's remained nearly steady reaked of corruption in the counting process. If that's really the case, it must mean Republicans are just smarter than Democrats, or at least able to understand simple instructions. If you are for anarchy, go ahead. Methinks you are off your rocker though.
Before you go flaming me as a racist, imperialist republican, know that I will be "throwing my vote away" on a third party. I have little love for George W. Bush, but given the choice I would choose Bush over Kerry for one reason alone, Kerry's lack of integrity. This man will say or do anything in his quest for political power and social acceptance. He claimed to have thrown away his medals in a protest march, turns out he still has them. He got two of his purple hearts under suspicious circumstances. He came back and said that he himself committed war crimes as well as witnessing them and doing nothing about them on a daily basis. He lied about being in Cambodia. He joined the military because he though it would help him attain his goal of getting into politics, when public opinion turned against the war he did as well to get public sympathy. After 30 minutes of mud-slinging against President Bush at the DNC, he told the audience with a straight face he hoped the election wouldn't get dirty.
The kicker was when I saw him on C-Span giving a speech at the University of San Diego. He kept spouting off all the great things he would do without explaining how he would possibly accomplish any of it. Finally he was harping on gas prices to cheers from the audience. He actually had a solution for that one. He would go to OPEC and the Arab leaders and get them to increase production to lower gas prices. "Wow", I though, "Is it really that easy?" Not two weeks later he was calling Bush "disgusting" for trying to do the exact same thing. He made it seem like a back-door plan with Bush getting favors from his family friends in Saudi Arabia just to help him in the election. What's Bush supposed to do, run the economy into the ground before the election? He should do his best to help America at all times. John Kerry is the one I think is disgusting.
I for one do not purchase a game unless there's a hack for it available. I have many games and keeping track of all the CDs and getting them out when I want to play for 15 minutes is a pain in the ass. If a CD goes bad, there's usually no recourse other than purchasing a new copy. Of course my CDs don't usually go bad since after I install the game they sit in their original CD cases.
December huh? What a nice early Christmas present it will be to read the oral arguments and judgement on this one:) IBM keeps painting SCO into a corner. First they forced the drop of trade secret claims. Now they're being forced to drop their ridiculous interpretation of the contract. In oral arguments, I bet SCO will file a third amended complaint that complains the following:
There were 161 lines of UNIX SYSV in a few versions of Linux (SGI admitted accidentally putting that in and it has since been removed)
IBM distributed Linux during the time this code was present
IBM therefore improperly distributed our UNIX SYSV code for a time
That, your honor, is why we terminated their license and are suing them for $50 billion
SCO's initial complaint focussed on trade secrets. IBM's requests for documents and interrogitories asked SCO to point to the exact trade secrets that were at issue. Of course SCO was supposed to do this when initially informing IBM of the supposed contract breach and give them 100 days to mend it before terminating the license. Nine months later in December 2003 when fighting the motion to compel in front of Judge Wells, SCO's lawyer argued the whole time about how they needed IBM code before they could identify the trade secrets at issue (of course they lost as they should have known the trade secrets and have evidence before starting the case). In fact, I doubt there are any trade secrets in Unix SYSV. To be a trade secret, you have to keep it secret. UNIX has been distributed to colleges and over 30,000 licensees. USL lost the BSD case, opening up the source code to an operating system VERY similar to UNIX. Anything in BSD is not a trade secret, and probably anything in UNIX since it was so widely distributed. Facing the motions to compel and IBM's arguments of law, SCO was forced to drop the trade secret claim.
SCO first introduced the warped interpretation of section 2.01 of their license that now forms their case in the February hearing. They used an analogy of a ladder, saying UNIX was steps 1-10, IBM added steps 11-20 but they can't give them away since they are built on the UNIX ladder. This has flown in the face of the standard definition of derivative works and takes a really biased eye to see that in the contract language. Ever since then I have been wanting IBM to step forward and call them out. IBM silence puzzled and frustrated me. Now I finally see their reason. Since SCO has made this the basis of their case since that February hearing and their second amended complaint, IBM has methodically been building evidence and taking depositions as to what the contract actually meant.
Now they come forth and I realize I'm not crazy. Every single person involved in negotiating the contract thought the same way I do, that it is plain ridiculous to think the contract means the licensee is prohibited from using their home-grown code elsewhere. Some companies were a tad worried about that provision of the license and AT&T was happy to clarify it (as they did in the AT&T-IBM side letter) saying that any code developed by the licensee was owned by the licensee. They even sent such a statement out in their $echo newsletter, and eventually changed the license wording to make it more clear. This did not change the meaning of the license at all, it just clarified the intent. From every single deposition (over 10) from both sides that came up with and negotiated the license (AT&T and IBM), we see that SCO's interpretation is plainly wrong.
IBM has several arguments to back them up:
Since you have to look at the contract with a lot of bias to see SCO's interpretation, the language seems unambiguous and the judge can rule that SCO is crazy.
If it is ambiguous (after all, many licensees requested clarification and AT&T did have to put that in the $echo newsletter), all evidence as to the intent of the parties falls squarely in IBM's favor.
If SCO's interpretation is correct (which would be a large stretch of imagination), Novell has waived any wrongdoing by IBM as is their clear right in the APA with Santa Cruz (no matter what SCO says)
Since it is a form license used to many customers and not a separate negotiated contract between individuals, any ambiguity must be decided against the party that came up with the license (AT&T->Novell->Santa Cruz->SCO)
"SCO's interpretation of the Software Agreements in this case would plainly produce an absurd and commercially unreasonable result." AIX is comprised of over 63 million lines, less than 100,000 of which are UNIX SYSV. That would mean that for using code that amounts to less than 0.16% of the entire product from a third party, that third pa
The foundation of a civil society is knowing what the laws are so you can't break them. If the people that make the laws don't even read them because they are too large, what hope do we have?
SCOX's requested certification not only didn't request what they were entitled to (a list of processors using UNIX), but requested a whole lot of other stuff instead (training manuals, documentation, certification that DC wasn't using Linux, etc.). Sure they mentioned section 2.05 in their request, but they didn't request the things they were entitled to.
What would you do if you had a contract to provide a bushell of corn to your neighbor at most once a year. Then a guy that lives a mile down the road sends you a letter saying he bought the contract from your neighbor and that you have to get him a bushell of apples and wants you to certify that you are not growing peaches. How would you respond if you were growing peaches? Would you go ahead and send him a bushell of oranges assuming that his claim to have taken over the contract is valid and that is what he is entitled to?
I think this should have been thrown out as well. They didn't even request what they were entitled to. I don't think ignoring a request for something they aren't entitled to is out of line. At the very least, SCOX should have made a good faith effort to contact them again. All they did was send a letter in December and then file suit in March. Come on, not even a second letter, a phone call, or a fax to see why they haven't responded yet? Who does business like that?
If the method that is patented is obvious to someone working in the field, the patent can be thrown out. I have a hard time seeing how allowing someone to pick an update from a menu is anything but obvious.
I'll have to reserve my full judgement until I download it and watch it for free. I think I am Moore's target audience for downloading, I would never pay to see it and am not going to vote for Kerry (Bush either). It seems like one big negative campaign add from what I've seen and heard.
Moore takes his point and is willing to make any distortion and misrepresentation he can to try and brainwash viewers into thinking like him. When you have newsweek running an article on how unfair the film is, you know something's wrong. Moore claims for instance that the Saudi Royals gave $1.4 billion to the Bush family. Forget for a minute that the Saudi Royals are also fighting terrorism... $1.18 billion of that is from contracts awarded to BDM, a former member of the Carlyle Group of which the senior Bush was on the advisory board. Moore would have you think that the Carlyle group is a wholely owned subsidiary of some mythic "Bush Enterprises" and that the money went straight into their bank accounts. It just so happens that those contracts were awarded to BDM in the early 90's and Bush wasn't placed on the advisory board of the Carlyle group until 1998, five months after it had sold BDM. Not to mention that it lost money on the deal so it was bad all around. Being on the advisory board for a company is a lot different than being the owner. Along with Bush, many democrats and members of Clinton's administration are also involved with that company.
What saddens and amazes me is all of the people that come away from the film thinking it is entirely true and quoting it. It's every bit as bad as Rush Limbaugh's "ditto-heads" that agree with everything he has to say. I wish US schools would teach more critical thinking instead of fact memorization. We should all be skeptics especially when we are being fed information by someone that doesn't even try to hide their agenda.
Longer codes would require a major overhaul of computer systems that would dwarf the challenges and expenses spawned by the Y2K computer dilemma, said Dave Proefke, chairman of the committee.
Dwarf the challenges of Y2K? Give me a break... What percentage of computer systems use only 17 characters for a VIN and cannot be changed with an 'alter table' command? Any of them would probably also be the same systems that would have been affected by Y2K. I guarantee dates are used in many more places than VIN numbers are.
Besides, there are all kinds of ideas in the article itself for getting around it, including many small countries that don't even produce vehicles that use VINs that are taking up a lot of the numbers. Cars build before 1981 didn't even have a standard, each company made up their own VIN numbers. The systems still have to account for those, so we could always go back to the old system. Many cars are out there now with duplicate VINs.
So one of the identifiers is a year. Are we making more and more cars every year so that the other fields fill up? If not, the current system should be good until after 2011, when it would wrap around to 1981 again.
Actually it probably doesn't have to be at "market rates" whatever they are. In a contract, all that you have to show is that consideration was given. It could be a penny, or just the promise to release it as part of an open source project that the artist could use as well. ANY consideration, monetary or otherwise, would make it a valid contract and assignment of copyright.
Hmmm... Still married at the time but headed for divorce. As her married partner, you are responsible for her debts as well. Don't be surprised if you open up your credit rating and find an unpaid $3,200 pager bill on there:)
What it means to not be compelled to be a witness against yourself is that they cannot force you to be a witness against yourself. What they can't do is arrest you and take your case to trial, call you as a witness, then ask you questions and penalize you if you fail to answer. Even further, they can't even call you to the stand or tell the jury that your failure to testify means anything (although the jury may come to that conclusion). Also when investigating a crime, you have the right to not say anything that could be used as evidence against you, or that would lead to them finding evidence against you. They must make a criminal case against you without your own testimony and get a jury of your peers to convict you. If you're innocent (and/or have a good lawyer), you will be acquitted. If you plea to a lesser crime, you're going to get punished. You can look at it like that, you actually get punished for testifying against yourself.
What you're saying doesn't really make sense. I understand where you're coing from, it's just that it isn't what the 5th Amendment represents. I don't think you can seriously say that offering a plea agreement goes against the spirit of the 5th Amendment:
'No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb,
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.'
If you don't want to be a witness against yourself, you have a perfect alternative to the plea agreement, go to trial. If you're complaining because the penalties for most crimes are too severe, then make that your complaint. If you're complaining that our justice system is so broken that many innocent people are convicted anyway, then make that your complaint.
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The only problem would be that people might be forced to vote a certain way, either paid to do so or blackmailed. Maybe someone's boss would ask to see their voter receipt and look up how they voted, then fire them if they voted for the a candidate he dissapproves of. We could make penalties in the law for that though...
Well actually, no they aren't. They are elected officials. We are not a monarchy, we don't appoint our leaders.
If you're talking about Afghanistan, that wasn't preemptive. The government aided terrorists and the attack on American soil was carried out by agents of that government and those it supported, after the US had helped them remain free from Russian control, including the right to keep their religion (something they wouldn't be allowed under communist rule).
If you're talking about Iraq, you're partly right. I don't think we should have invaded Iraq. Of course the first war was not preemptive, we and the rest of the world were liberating Kuwait. We obviously didn't have enough evidence to conclude that Saddam was going to use a weapon of mass distruction. Even though he agreed to let UN inspectors make sure he wasn't doing anything, he thwarted them every step of the way for a decade. Sometimes when they would go to inspect a building, they would be stopped and see truckloads of stuff being taken out of the back. We should have put less faith in the intelligence of our own CIA and the organizations of the British and Russians, apparently they were all wrong. Even though Saddam wishes he would wipe America off the map, I don't think we should have invaded Iraq. That is one of the reasons I will not be voting for Bush come November.
I'm against the patriot act. Many congressmen rushed to sign it before they even read it. What a disingenuous name. It seems to imply that if you value liberty that you are not a patriot. Try telling that to the founding fathers.
That is horrible and needs more investigating. I don't think it's innappropriate to deny felons the right to vote. Our rights can be taken away by due process of law, as their's were when they were incarcerated and now denied the vote. Specifically targetting certain felons and having non-felons appear on the list is outrageous though, even if it could be cleared up with a simple phone call. If they were specifically targetting democrats and there is any proof, I think all those involved, including Jeb if he was, should go to jail.
And there's also a quote from them:
The people that posted the list and the ones that will undoubtedly use it to harass the delegates aren't interested in speaking on their own views, they are interested in suppressing the views of others. Stopping this intimidation and harassment would actually be a boon to free speech, not a hinderance.I may just send in my renewal though... I don't always agree with the people the ACLU defend, but if the most guilty and underserving of us can be abused by the government, it may not be long before we're all at risk. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if I were I might be questioning those "voting leagues" too. From what I've gathered, it appears they go into people's houses and get them to send in an absentee balot. I don't think I'd like people coming to my door and giving me a ballot to sign then mailing it for me.
Now keep in mind this is just what some conspiracy nut might think. Sounds like the "get out the vote" campaign by the Democrats in NY where they rounded up bums and took them to the pools and gave them cigarettes to vote Democrat.
As for this being an abuse of the Justice Department, go ahead and look up an individual's name if you want to. Putting all their names on a public website with the express intent of harassing them is probably a criminal act. Why do you think the names are posted? Here are some quotes from the site:
The fiasco in Florida was sad, but Bush was elected by the rules that we have in place. I have a hard time believing that nearly 100% of the hanging chads were votes for Gore. I thought the fiasco afterwards where Gore's vote count kept rising but Bush's remained nearly steady reaked of corruption in the counting process. If that's really the case, it must mean Republicans are just smarter than Democrats, or at least able to understand simple instructions. If you are for anarchy, go ahead. Methinks you are off your rocker though.
Before you go flaming me as a racist, imperialist republican, know that I will be "throwing my vote away" on a third party. I have little love for George W. Bush, but given the choice I would choose Bush over Kerry for one reason alone, Kerry's lack of integrity. This man will say or do anything in his quest for political power and social acceptance. He claimed to have thrown away his medals in a protest march, turns out he still has them. He got two of his purple hearts under suspicious circumstances. He came back and said that he himself committed war crimes as well as witnessing them and doing nothing about them on a daily basis. He lied about being in Cambodia. He joined the military because he though it would help him attain his goal of getting into politics, when public opinion turned against the war he did as well to get public sympathy. After 30 minutes of mud-slinging against President Bush at the DNC, he told the audience with a straight face he hoped the election wouldn't get dirty.
The kicker was when I saw him on C-Span giving a speech at the University of San Diego. He kept spouting off all the great things he would do without explaining how he would possibly accomplish any of it. Finally he was harping on gas prices to cheers from the audience. He actually had a solution for that one. He would go to OPEC and the Arab leaders and get them to increase production to lower gas prices. "Wow", I though, "Is it really that easy?" Not two weeks later he was calling Bush "disgusting" for trying to do the exact same thing. He made it seem like a back-door plan with Bush getting favors from his family friends in Saudi Arabia just to help him in the election. What's Bush supposed to do, run the economy into the ground before the election? He should do his best to help America at all times. John Kerry is the one I think is disgusting.
I for one do not purchase a game unless there's a hack for it available. I have many games and keeping track of all the CDs and getting them out when I want to play for 15 minutes is a pain in the ass. If a CD goes bad, there's usually no recourse other than purchasing a new copy. Of course my CDs don't usually go bad since after I install the game they sit in their original CD cases.
What? It's four sentences, count the periods :)
SCO first introduced the warped interpretation of section 2.01 of their license that now forms their case in the February hearing. They used an analogy of a ladder, saying UNIX was steps 1-10, IBM added steps 11-20 but they can't give them away since they are built on the UNIX ladder. This has flown in the face of the standard definition of derivative works and takes a really biased eye to see that in the contract language. Ever since then I have been wanting IBM to step forward and call them out. IBM silence puzzled and frustrated me. Now I finally see their reason. Since SCO has made this the basis of their case since that February hearing and their second amended complaint, IBM has methodically been building evidence and taking depositions as to what the contract actually meant.
Now they come forth and I realize I'm not crazy. Every single person involved in negotiating the contract thought the same way I do, that it is plain ridiculous to think the contract means the licensee is prohibited from using their home-grown code elsewhere. Some companies were a tad worried about that provision of the license and AT&T was happy to clarify it (as they did in the AT&T-IBM side letter) saying that any code developed by the licensee was owned by the licensee. They even sent such a statement out in their $echo newsletter, and eventually changed the license wording to make it more clear. This did not change the meaning of the license at all, it just clarified the intent. From every single deposition (over 10) from both sides that came up with and negotiated the license (AT&T and IBM), we see that SCO's interpretation is plainly wrong.
IBM has several arguments to back them up:
The foundation of a civil society is knowing what the laws are so you can't break them. If the people that make the laws don't even read them because they are too large, what hope do we have?
I could see if SCSI was just behind IDE, but I've seen 146 gb drives available for years. In the same time, IDE has gone from 160 gb to 300+ gb.
What would you do if you had a contract to provide a bushell of corn to your neighbor at most once a year. Then a guy that lives a mile down the road sends you a letter saying he bought the contract from your neighbor and that you have to get him a bushell of apples and wants you to certify that you are not growing peaches. How would you respond if you were growing peaches? Would you go ahead and send him a bushell of oranges assuming that his claim to have taken over the contract is valid and that is what he is entitled to?
I think this should have been thrown out as well. They didn't even request what they were entitled to. I don't think ignoring a request for something they aren't entitled to is out of line. At the very least, SCOX should have made a good faith effort to contact them again. All they did was send a letter in December and then file suit in March. Come on, not even a second letter, a phone call, or a fax to see why they haven't responded yet? Who does business like that?
If the method that is patented is obvious to someone working in the field, the patent can be thrown out. I have a hard time seeing how allowing someone to pick an update from a menu is anything but obvious.
Moore takes his point and is willing to make any distortion and misrepresentation he can to try and brainwash viewers into thinking like him. When you have newsweek running an article on how unfair the film is, you know something's wrong. Moore claims for instance that the Saudi Royals gave $1.4 billion to the Bush family. Forget for a minute that the Saudi Royals are also fighting terrorism... $1.18 billion of that is from contracts awarded to BDM, a former member of the Carlyle Group of which the senior Bush was on the advisory board. Moore would have you think that the Carlyle group is a wholely owned subsidiary of some mythic "Bush Enterprises" and that the money went straight into their bank accounts. It just so happens that those contracts were awarded to BDM in the early 90's and Bush wasn't placed on the advisory board of the Carlyle group until 1998, five months after it had sold BDM. Not to mention that it lost money on the deal so it was bad all around. Being on the advisory board for a company is a lot different than being the owner. Along with Bush, many democrats and members of Clinton's administration are also involved with that company.
What saddens and amazes me is all of the people that come away from the film thinking it is entirely true and quoting it. It's every bit as bad as Rush Limbaugh's "ditto-heads" that agree with everything he has to say. I wish US schools would teach more critical thinking instead of fact memorization. We should all be skeptics especially when we are being fed information by someone that doesn't even try to hide their agenda.
Besides, there are all kinds of ideas in the article itself for getting around it, including many small countries that don't even produce vehicles that use VINs that are taking up a lot of the numbers. Cars build before 1981 didn't even have a standard, each company made up their own VIN numbers. The systems still have to account for those, so we could always go back to the old system. Many cars are out there now with duplicate VINs.
So one of the identifiers is a year. Are we making more and more cars every year so that the other fields fill up? If not, the current system should be good until after 2011, when it would wrap around to 1981 again.
Actually it probably doesn't have to be at "market rates" whatever they are. In a contract, all that you have to show is that consideration was given. It could be a penny, or just the promise to release it as part of an open source project that the artist could use as well. ANY consideration, monetary or otherwise, would make it a valid contract and assignment of copyright.
Actually you missed a story, Novell filed for copyrights.
Hmmm... Still married at the time but headed for divorce. As her married partner, you are responsible for her debts as well. Don't be surprised if you open up your credit rating and find an unpaid $3,200 pager bill on there :)
What it means to not be compelled to be a witness against yourself is that they cannot force you to be a witness against yourself. What they can't do is arrest you and take your case to trial, call you as a witness, then ask you questions and penalize you if you fail to answer. Even further, they can't even call you to the stand or tell the jury that your failure to testify means anything (although the jury may come to that conclusion). Also when investigating a crime, you have the right to not say anything that could be used as evidence against you, or that would lead to them finding evidence against you. They must make a criminal case against you without your own testimony and get a jury of your peers to convict you. If you're innocent (and/or have a good lawyer), you will be acquitted. If you plea to a lesser crime, you're going to get punished. You can look at it like that, you actually get punished for testifying against yourself.