From what I've read, "With one exception, works of the United States government are public domain. 17 U.S.C. 105. The only exception is for standard reference data produced by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce under the Standard Reference Data Act, 15 U.S.C. 290e."
But this only applies to things produced by the federal government. If it's a work produced by someone else (university, advertiser, etc) and the federal government licenses it, it doesn't become public domain. So those Sept 11th commercials are most likely not public domain, and university research done with federal money is not necessarily public domain.
"A certificate says nothing about the quality of the website or the business behind it"
All I'm saying is that it could, rather simply.
Just for a moment, imagine that the BBB honestly put the put the protection of consumers as it's first priority.
Now imagine I have a website www.cheapasscomputerparts.com that's listed on Pricewatch. There are, of course, plenty of scammers and upsell artists on Pricewatch, and I want to differentiate my site from them, so I apply to a BBB "Consumer Friendly Merchant" program. After reviewing my site and my business methods they give me a nice little BBB logo (which, of course, anyone could fake) and a BBB cert for my shopping cart (which shouldn't be fakeable and should expire in a reasonable timeframe, let's say monthly) If the BBB starts getting a bunch of complaints about my site they can simply stop renewing my cert. As long as I have a BBB cert you know that my site was endorsed within the last month.
I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little tired of having to locate products on Pricewatch, Dealtime, BizRate, MySimon, etc then google around looking for consumer experiences with the companies that are listed. And, of course, you have to bear in mind that it's trivial to fake positive reviews. A consumer protection group could do much more to keep merchants honest, and a cert would be a great way of conveying that.
"In reality, all people want out of SSL is encryption. The decision to trust the business in question is always going to be the customer's and that decision will not be influenced by who signed the cert."
This just begs the question...why? Why doesn't the BBB or some similar consumer protection group issues certs? None of the certification authorities mentioned in this thread give a damn about consumers, and that's no great secret. So if I see a verisign cert, your right, it has no bearing on the quality of the merchant...but if I see a BBB cert, I could reasonably assume it's not some fly by night rip-off artists.
I seem to remember bidding on items in USENET auctions in the late 80s and early 90s. Sure, it wasn't the WWW, but nothing fundamental to the business of auctioning online has changed since then.
Of course, it's not really this guy's fault that the patent system is so fubar.. If he didn't have the patent, Ebay surely would and they'd be buisy suing everyone else right now.
I've been accused of writing/spreading virii twice.. Once I was "reported" to cert. Before that, a person I do contract work for was accused, in the course of a domestic violence case, of targeting a friend's computer with SirCam (and it was alleged in court that I wrote the virus for him.)
Thankfully, it's incredibly simple to prove that these people are idiots who don't know what they're talking about. I wouldn't bother getting bent out of shape about it. The FBI, CIA, CERT, and even your local court system know better than to beleive these sorts of nonsence accusations.
Why would anyone bother arguing against Windows when it's so simple to argue FOR Linux...
On the 11 servers I run I'm averaging 141 days of uptime with a high of 258 days and a low of 25 days. What more needs to be said?
I work from home as a contractor doing Perl/C/C++ programming and Linux system administration. Several years back I worked at home as a freelance writer for a local paper (all interviews were done by phone.) My wife's aunt works from home as a contractor doing HR software implementation/consulting and as a paid speaker for a national HR organization (she has to travel from time to time, but not at her own expense.) The father of one of my highschool friends worked from home as a contractor doing insurance consulting and risk assesment. (He eventually gave this up to work as a realtor. He was making good money but wanted more money.) The mother of a different highschool friend worked from home as a contractor doing interior decorating and made a very good living at it (though this still ties her to a single city.)
I'm sure you can see that common factor in all these stories. Work as a contractor, do something you love, do something you're great at, do something that's worth the money, charge reasonably, exceed expectations, and you'll have no problems.
The XBox is a wonderful tax write off at this point. Much better, from Microsoft's perspective, than giving hundreds of millions of dollars to schools, developing countries, etc...
Kind of makes you wonder why any major companies donate to charity when they can just produce products that lose money instead.
Have you seen the 318 packages that are missing from some of the Mandrake 8.2 PowerPack CD's?
http://www.club-nihil.net/mub/viewtopic.php?t=366
I'll take RedHat up on this offer.
Slashdot Mirror
From what I've read,
"With one exception, works of the United States government are public
domain. 17 U.S.C. 105. The only exception is for standard reference
data produced by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce under the Standard
Reference Data Act, 15 U.S.C. 290e."
But this only applies to things produced by the federal government. If it's a work produced by someone else (university, advertiser, etc) and the federal government licenses it, it doesn't become public domain. So those Sept 11th commercials are most likely not public domain, and university research done with federal money is not necessarily public domain.
"A certificate says nothing about the quality of the website or the business behind it"
All I'm saying is that it could, rather simply.
Just for a moment, imagine that the BBB honestly put the put the protection of consumers as it's first priority.
Now imagine I have a website www.cheapasscomputerparts.com that's listed on Pricewatch. There are, of course, plenty of scammers and upsell artists on Pricewatch, and I want to differentiate my site from them, so I apply to a BBB "Consumer Friendly Merchant" program. After reviewing my site and my business methods they give me a nice little BBB logo (which, of course, anyone could fake) and a BBB cert for my shopping cart (which shouldn't be fakeable and should expire in a reasonable timeframe, let's say monthly) If the BBB starts getting a bunch of complaints about my site they can simply stop renewing my cert. As long as I have a BBB cert you know that my site was endorsed within the last month.
I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little tired of having to locate products on Pricewatch, Dealtime, BizRate, MySimon, etc then google around looking for consumer experiences with the companies that are listed. And, of course, you have to bear in mind that it's trivial to fake positive reviews. A consumer protection group could do much more to keep merchants honest, and a cert would be a great way of conveying that.
"In reality, all people want out of SSL is encryption. The decision to trust the business in question is always going to be the customer's and that decision will not be influenced by who signed the cert."
This just begs the question...why? Why doesn't the BBB or some similar consumer protection group issues certs? None of the certification authorities mentioned in this thread give a damn about consumers, and that's no great secret. So if I see a verisign cert, your right, it has no bearing on the quality of the merchant...but if I see a BBB cert, I could reasonably assume it's not some fly by night rip-off artists.
(Before you even say it...yes, I know the BBB is funded by retailers, and has ignored consumer complaints in the past.)
I seem to remember bidding on items in USENET auctions in the late 80s and early 90s. Sure, it wasn't the WWW, but nothing fundamental to the business of auctioning online has changed since then.
Of course, it's not really this guy's fault that the patent system is so fubar.. If he didn't have the patent, Ebay surely would and they'd be buisy suing everyone else right now.
I've been accused of writing/spreading virii twice.. Once I was "reported" to cert. Before that, a person I do contract work for was accused, in the course of a domestic violence case, of targeting a friend's computer with SirCam (and it was alleged in court that I wrote the virus for him.)
Thankfully, it's incredibly simple to prove that these people are idiots who don't know what they're talking about. I wouldn't bother getting bent out of shape about it. The FBI, CIA, CERT, and even your local court system know better than to beleive these sorts of nonsence accusations.
Why would anyone bother arguing against Windows when it's so simple to argue FOR Linux...
On the 11 servers I run I'm averaging 141 days of uptime with a high of 258 days and a low of 25 days. What more needs to be said?
I work from home as a contractor doing Perl/C/C++ programming and Linux system administration. Several years back I worked at home as a freelance writer for a local paper (all interviews were done by phone.) My wife's aunt works from home as a contractor doing HR software implementation/consulting and as a paid speaker for a national HR organization (she has to travel from time to time, but not at her own expense.) The father of one of my highschool friends worked from home as a contractor doing insurance consulting and risk assesment. (He eventually gave this up to work as a realtor. He was making good money but wanted more money.) The mother of a different highschool friend worked from home as a contractor doing interior decorating and made a very good living at it (though this still ties her to a single city.)
I'm sure you can see that common factor in all these stories. Work as a contractor, do something you love, do something you're great at, do something that's worth the money, charge reasonably, exceed expectations, and you'll have no problems.
http://www.web.net/32hours/Health%20Effects%20v2.
The XBox is a wonderful tax write off at this point. Much better, from Microsoft's perspective, than giving hundreds of millions of dollars to schools, developing countries, etc...
Kind of makes you wonder why any major companies donate to charity when they can just produce products that lose money instead.
Have you seen the 318 packages that are missing from some of the Mandrake 8.2 PowerPack CD's? http://www.club-nihil.net/mub/viewtopic.php?t=366 I'll take RedHat up on this offer.