Blogs and bloggers are just people, anyone really. This fact seems to escape the ALA President as if anyone publishing information is automatically held up to some high standard.
I guess I'm not exactly sure who this ALA president is really talking about. I don't "blog", and I'm not a "blogger" (unless you're one of those people who consider slashdot a blog), so I'm not exactly familiar with a wide variety of blogs/bloggers. But my feeling was always there's nothing really special and/or stereotypical about blogs/bloggers execept maybe they're a bit too fanatical about whatever it is their blog is about.
In the second place, if he originally thought the item was worth x$, why increase it?
Because most of the time when you're bidding on an item there's another almost identical item up for sale at the same time. Not setting as high a max price as you think its worth gives you the flexibility to choose another item that's just as good, but that might be cheaper.
Oh I'm sure you're right, the 10,000 user orgs aren't going to be the first to adopt this technology. Like every other change in technology they'll be pushed by the smaller organzations adopting it.
I'd have to disagree. An open standard is a replacement for Exchange. Perhaps you need a method for connecting outlook to your groupware server, but I see little reason why a groupware server needs to talk exchange.
Before businesses widely adopted SMTP as a standard mail protocol there were all the crappy proprietary mail standards that didn't inter-operate. They all died the long death as people wanted to talk to each other across the internet. I think the same thing will happen with groupware. Until now there hasn't been a standard (or at least an accepted standard) for client/server to talk to each other. The best we've got is iCal, and that's really calendaring only.
You see, there are these magical things called "links". How about you learn the spell for following them?
There's this magic thing called a "summary". Often when people want to make a point, they'll actually give a short summary of it rather than just lazily pointing people off to umpteen websites.
Your argument is still pointless though. Since almost no one has heard of these orgs, obviously we've also never heard of any scandals these orgs have been in either.
Oh really? Of the organizations I listed (in alphabetical order), how many are bloated and overbudget? How many have involved scandal of any kind? How many have been largely ineffective? Etc?
Maybe this argument has meaning in international-relations circles, but here on slashdot we don't know what the hell you're talking about. Listing off alphabet soup organazations that no one has heard of before, then challenging people to list scandals involving them is meaningless. I think I've heard of a sum total of two UN organizations. WHO (world health organization), and UNICEF (oh and I suppose UNESCO, but only because it was featured in the game Deus Ex)
If you want to make your case that the UN is the right organization to manage internet address space, you have to give examples of shared internation resources that the UN has successfully managed before. By my own admission I'm certainly not expert on UN orgs, but I didn't think there WERE any shared international resources that the UN managed.
At a minimum, the damage is $500 (the cost to join ADC at a level which is given the seeds) times the number of people who downloaded it.
Only if Apple can somehow prove that everyone that DLed it would have actually bought the product. Extremely doubtfull. Most people that DLed it were very likely just interested consumers who would never have dreamed of plunking down $500 for a BETA copy of MaxOS.
This from Mr. "That's a big load of crap, and you know it." Rich.
There's a difference between being personally insulting, and saying something someone said is crap. Civility isn't respecting everything everyone says equally, it's not turning the argument personal.
In your fantasy this guy took some super-valuable prototype and sold it to xyz-corp who beat Apple to the punch. In your fantasy, I'd agree the guy should get sued for millions of dollars.
Unfortunately, this isn't your fantasy. In real life he traded beta software anyone can get (and is probbably already traded like mad within development companies). No one stole any crown jewels. No trade secrets were taken. Please stick to reality when talking about actual court cases. Reserve fantasy for your fiction book writing.
How unclear is patent law? The patent is published. The rules governing patents are published. The enforcment of patents has been the same since day 1 in this country, and it benefits the small-time entrepreneur every bit as much the megacorp.
Parent law isn't as unclear as much as it's unfair. Anyone with a suitcase full of money can sue any competitor they think they can take on with a trumped up patent portfolio. Patents are weapons, and unless you have the money to defend yourself, you lose no matter if you're in the right or not. See power of large corps above.
Defamation is defamation. Free speech is free speech. The boundary between the two has been an ongoing debate since before the founding of this country. Take out "megacorps" and insert "Nobility" or "Celebrity" and you have the same cases going back for centures.
Kinda sounds like you're saying the law IS unclear. Why does the fact that evil bullshit has been going on for centuries make it allright? Murder, rape, and theft have been going on since recorded history, but yet stranglely we still think they're wrong. As far as trade secrets go, a trade secret can be between 2 people, or 2 million. The size of the distribution doesn't matter.
Don't give me that. 2 million people knowing something is NOT a secret. Trade secret relies on something ACTUALLY being a secret. If it's generally known, guess what? It's no longer a secret. And as far as monetary damage goes, if someone takes your product and starts minting a cheap copies, that hurts your bottom line.
Except that's not at all what happened here. You've only invented your false scenario because if you stated the truth, it'd be quite obvious there's no monetary damage. No one minted cheap copies, as of yet there's not an actual final product yet! This was a BETA, not the final product. If anything it would only increase sales of the final product since no one runs a beta OS once the final release comes out.
Because it's opinion about something that's a fact, not an opinion about what flavor ice cream tastes better. There is an ultimate truth about how much money this actually cost Apple. Facts contribute to form an opinion, and in this case the facts are that the software is BETA, it's already released to thousands of people, there's no source code involved, and the final release is only a few months away.
The world isn't quite as simple as they made it out in High School with those simple definitions of Fact and Opinion. In reality there's no hard line between the two, but a much larger continum. Trying to pass off his comments as trying to deny you the right to an opinion is hypocritical
Except he was trying to say we (as in the public, or slashdot, or whomever) couldn't determine if any damage was done. That sounds an awful lot like not being able to have an opinion, or at least not any valid opinion. In this case even the Judge or Jury would only have an opinion on the matter, as the actual fact of how much money was lost is near impossible to actually determine. I hope you're not one of those people that thinks all opinions are equally valid. and it makes you look like a crybaby.
Try to be a bit more civil. No one likes a name-caller.
That is not for us to determine. As the injured party, it is for Apple to determine what they need to do.
So I guess I (and everyone else) are robbed of having any opnion on the matter. The decider of who wins the case will be a judge or jury (though I doubt this will ever get that far). But that doesn't mean no one can have an opnion on how much Apple was really hurt by this. Do you say the same thing about OJ Simpson because 12 people thought he was innocent?
I don't have a problem with actually calling someone stupid, or a dumbass. My problem comes in when it's used in such a way that it seperates people from their humanity. Just like calling someone a nigger, kike, etc does. There seems to be a culture on slashdot that sees to world this way, and quite frankly I'm tired of that attitude.
I do like dumbass a bit better though as it doesn't seem to imply an inherent lack of smarts, just a temporary one.
So you're saying that if you screw someone with lots of money, they shouldn't be able to sue you in return?
That's a big load of crap, and you know it. There's no real damage here. This is a beta release of software already given to thousands of people that's going to go public in a few months anyway. This case is about the culture of Apple and likely Steve Jobs going ape-shit every time something "leaks".
You have to step past several clearly marked, if flimsy, points of law.
Bullshit. The points of law aren't clearly marked, they're whatever the corps decide they are. Violate my invalid patent? lawsuit. Say something I think is defamotory to the corp? lawsuit. Tell people about a black friday sale? lawsuit. Name your website about your star wars toys ToysRGus.com? lawsuit. The law is _supposed_ to protect people and businesses from the damage inflicted by others. This particular case has nothing to do with the actual damage caused by this guy, because there really is none. What it's about is muscle flexing and knocking someone down to the ground in an attempt to show where the real power lies, big corps. You may think that's justifiable, but it's not the intent of the law. In that respect our legal system is there to seperate the wrongdoers from the innocent.
The civil system is never inteded to stop "wrongdoers" that's what our criminal legal system is for. This is not an issue of right vs. wrong like people are trying to make it out to be. It's an issue of monetary damage. But passing around trade secrets and copyrighted material over p2p networks is hard to argue the lack of guilt.
The "trade secrets" involved were shared with thousands of other people, and will become public knowledge within a few months. There's no source code theft here. Not a very secret trade secret. You keep talking about "guilt" as if it's the ultimate deciding factor of ruining someone financially. The case is about damage and liability. Guilt is a term associated with criminal courts.
Sadly, you're correct. Corporations are like a charging bull that can't be defended against unless you happen to be a bull yourself. That's actually the problem I'm pointing out. Corporations have far too much control over everyone. In a world full of angry bulls, why do we allow them to roam free around the world maming whomever can't defend themselves?
Almost 40 years ago the supreme court ruled that poor people are entitled to a public defender in criminal cases brought against them because the constitution guaranteed a fair trial. I find the power that corps have to sue individuals very similar to that situation, though I'm not exactly certain if the constitution was ever intended to protect individuals from corps.
From your own statements, I don't think you do. You've already decided that a lawyer will cost him more than it'll save him... before Apple has even declared what they're seeking. The amount of damages is in the award of the judge.
Which is based on what the plaintiff argues. With no lawyer to defend you, Apple is free to make up essentially whatever frivolous charges they want. There's a LONG standing tradition of companies just making up numbers to make it look like a big case, and then hope it sticks.
He doesn't need to defend himself. He actually did everything he was accused of. Hiring a lawyer is simply throwing good money away.
You obviously don't understand the civil system. This isn't about guilt or innocense, it's about damages and liability. This isn't a criminal trial where a judge/jury determines if you're innocent or guilty of a crime. This is a trial where the plaintiff says how much monetary damage they had inflicted on them, and the defendant has to defend against the amount of damage, liability for that damage, etc. The lawyer would take apart all the ridiculous "damage" claims that Apple will likely fabricate, and/or argue the defendant isn't liable for said damages.
The wealth of the litigants is completely irrelevant.
It's completely relevant. How can any person defend themselves against a multi-billion dollar corporation with teams of lawyers on salary if said corporation gets a bug up their butt? Trials are supposed to be fair (even civil trials), and this is clearly a case of unfairness. Do you really like a world where corps have the power to do whatever they want to individuals because they can sue you into oblivion? If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
Actually it's not a crime, and there is no "time". This is a civil matter.
Why is the big mantra on slashdot "this guy is stupid!", as if this is the ultimate sin? I guess "stupid" people don't deserve anything but contempt. Calling someone stupid is the new kike/nigger/dago/wop/chink/gook/raghead/fag/guinea/kraut.
This is clearly a case of a massive corporation against a lone individual. His age is irrelevant. What is relevant is that he has no means to defend himself against a multi-billion dollar corporation with an axe to grind, and that his intent wasn't malicious.
This is a civil matter, so there's no jail involved. However, why should Apple computer be able to ruin someones life through financial means just because they have multi-billions of dollars and he has.. well probbably almost nothing? I'm sure Apple will trump up millions of dollars worth of "damages" in a miss-guided attempt at "sending a message". In this case Microsoft is actually the better company. How many times have pre-releases of windows been leaked, but yet they've never gone out on the warpath with big lawsuits?
ClamAV relies on an external program to open RAR archives. Presumably this will work in windows as well, but I don't know if there's a command-line compatible version of unrar that'll work in windows. Perhaps cygwin supplies such a beast.
The OSS program ClamAV supports scanning of RAR files. If most anti-virus programs truly don't support RAR format, this is another big win for ClamAV. (I run it on my own server, and as part of an anti spam/virus email service and it runs flawlessly).
Mars isn't flat, and the area of the sea surely isn't square, but a very rough estimation of the volume would be: 800,000 meters * 900,000 meters * 45 meters = 32,400,000,000,000 cubic meters = 8,559,174,460,226,494 gallons or in words 8.6 quadrillion gallons or 32.4 quadrillion liters.
Slashdot Mirror
Blogs and bloggers are just people, anyone really. This fact seems to escape the ALA President as if anyone publishing information is automatically held up to some high standard.
I guess I'm not exactly sure who this ALA president is really talking about. I don't "blog", and I'm not a "blogger" (unless you're one of those people who consider slashdot a blog), so I'm not exactly familiar with a wide variety of blogs/bloggers. But my feeling was always there's nothing really special and/or stereotypical about blogs/bloggers execept maybe they're a bit too fanatical about whatever it is their blog is about.
They don't need to close at the exact same time, just near the time you want the item.
In the second place, if he originally thought the item was worth x$, why increase it?
Because most of the time when you're bidding on an item there's another almost identical item up for sale at the same time. Not setting as high a max price as you think its worth gives you the flexibility to choose another item that's just as good, but that might be cheaper.
Oh I'm sure you're right, the 10,000 user orgs aren't going to be the first to adopt this technology. Like every other change in technology they'll be pushed by the smaller organzations adopting it.
I'd have to disagree. An open standard is a replacement for Exchange. Perhaps you need a method for connecting outlook to your groupware server, but I see little reason why a groupware server needs to talk exchange.
Before businesses widely adopted SMTP as a standard mail protocol there were all the crappy proprietary mail standards that didn't inter-operate. They all died the long death as people wanted to talk to each other across the internet. I think the same thing will happen with groupware. Until now there hasn't been a standard (or at least an accepted standard) for client/server to talk to each other. The best we've got is iCal, and that's really calendaring only.
Where did you get the idea that the original owner trusted the to "take care of it when he was gone?". It's a website, not a child or dog.
You see, there are these magical things called "links". How about you learn the spell for following them?
There's this magic thing called a "summary". Often when people want to make a point, they'll actually give a short summary of it rather than just lazily pointing people off to umpteen websites.
Your argument is still pointless though. Since almost no one has heard of these orgs, obviously we've also never heard of any scandals these orgs have been in either.
Oh really? Of the organizations I listed (in alphabetical order), how many are bloated and overbudget? How many have involved scandal of any kind? How many have been largely ineffective? Etc?
Maybe this argument has meaning in international-relations circles, but here on slashdot we don't know what the hell you're talking about. Listing off alphabet soup organazations that no one has heard of before, then challenging people to list scandals involving them is meaningless. I think I've heard of a sum total of two UN organizations. WHO (world health organization), and UNICEF (oh and I suppose UNESCO, but only because it was featured in the game Deus Ex)
If you want to make your case that the UN is the right organization to manage internet address space, you have to give examples of shared internation resources that the UN has successfully managed before. By my own admission I'm certainly not expert on UN orgs, but I didn't think there WERE any shared international resources that the UN managed.
At a minimum, the damage is $500 (the cost to join ADC at a level which is given the seeds) times the number of people who downloaded it.
Only if Apple can somehow prove that everyone that DLed it would have actually bought the product. Extremely doubtfull. Most people that DLed it were very likely just interested consumers who would never have dreamed of plunking down $500 for a BETA copy of MaxOS.
This from Mr. "That's a big load of crap, and you know it." Rich.
There's a difference between being personally insulting, and saying something someone said is crap. Civility isn't respecting everything everyone says equally, it's not turning the argument personal.
In your fantasy this guy took some super-valuable prototype and sold it to xyz-corp who beat Apple to the punch. In your fantasy, I'd agree the guy should get sued for millions of dollars.
Unfortunately, this isn't your fantasy. In real life he traded beta software anyone can get (and is probbably already traded like mad within development companies). No one stole any crown jewels. No trade secrets were taken. Please stick to reality when talking about actual court cases. Reserve fantasy for your fiction book writing.
How unclear is patent law? The patent is published. The rules governing patents are published. The enforcment of patents has been the same since day 1 in this country, and it benefits the small-time entrepreneur every bit as much the megacorp.
Parent law isn't as unclear as much as it's unfair. Anyone with a suitcase full of money can sue any competitor they think they can take on with a trumped up patent portfolio. Patents are weapons, and unless you have the money to defend yourself, you lose no matter if you're in the right or not. See power of large corps above.
Defamation is defamation. Free speech is free speech. The boundary between the two has been an ongoing debate since before the founding of this country. Take out "megacorps" and insert "Nobility" or "Celebrity" and you have the same cases going back for centures.
Kinda sounds like you're saying the law IS unclear. Why does the fact that evil bullshit has been going on for centuries make it allright? Murder, rape, and theft have been going on since recorded history, but yet stranglely we still think they're wrong.
As far as trade secrets go, a trade secret can be between 2 people, or 2 million. The size of the distribution doesn't matter.
Don't give me that. 2 million people knowing something is NOT a secret. Trade secret relies on something ACTUALLY being a secret. If it's generally known, guess what? It's no longer a secret.
And as far as monetary damage goes, if someone takes your product and starts minting a cheap copies, that hurts your bottom line.
Except that's not at all what happened here. You've only invented your false scenario because if you stated the truth, it'd be quite obvious there's no monetary damage. No one minted cheap copies, as of yet there's not an actual final product yet! This was a BETA, not the final product. If anything it would only increase sales of the final product since no one runs a beta OS once the final release comes out.
Because it's opinion about something that's a fact, not an opinion about what flavor ice cream tastes better. There is an ultimate truth about how much money this actually cost Apple. Facts contribute to form an opinion, and in this case the facts are that the software is BETA, it's already released to thousands of people, there's no source code involved, and the final release is only a few months away.
The world isn't quite as simple as they made it out in High School with those simple definitions of Fact and Opinion. In reality there's no hard line between the two, but a much larger continum.
Trying to pass off his comments as trying to deny you the right to an opinion is hypocritical
Except he was trying to say we (as in the public, or slashdot, or whomever) couldn't determine if any damage was done. That sounds an awful lot like not being able to have an opinion, or at least not any valid opinion. In this case even the Judge or Jury would only have an opinion on the matter, as the actual fact of how much money was lost is near impossible to actually determine. I hope you're not one of those people that thinks all opinions are equally valid.
and it makes you look like a crybaby.
Try to be a bit more civil. No one likes a name-caller.
That is not for us to determine. As the injured party, it is for Apple to determine what they need to do.
So I guess I (and everyone else) are robbed of having any opnion on the matter. The decider of who wins the case will be a judge or jury (though I doubt this will ever get that far). But that doesn't mean no one can have an opnion on how much Apple was really hurt by this. Do you say the same thing about OJ Simpson because 12 people thought he was innocent?
I don't have a problem with actually calling someone stupid, or a dumbass. My problem comes in when it's used in such a way that it seperates people from their humanity. Just like calling someone a nigger, kike, etc does. There seems to be a culture on slashdot that sees to world this way, and quite frankly I'm tired of that attitude.
I do like dumbass a bit better though as it doesn't seem to imply an inherent lack of smarts, just a temporary one.
So you're saying that if you screw someone with lots of money, they shouldn't be able to sue you in return?
That's a big load of crap, and you know it. There's no real damage here. This is a beta release of software already given to thousands of people that's going to go public in a few months anyway. This case is about the culture of Apple and likely Steve Jobs going ape-shit every time something "leaks".
You have to step past several clearly marked, if flimsy, points of law.
Bullshit. The points of law aren't clearly marked, they're whatever the corps decide they are. Violate my invalid patent? lawsuit. Say something I think is defamotory to the corp? lawsuit. Tell people about a black friday sale? lawsuit. Name your website about your star wars toys ToysRGus.com? lawsuit. The law is _supposed_ to protect people and businesses from the damage inflicted by others. This particular case has nothing to do with the actual damage caused by this guy, because there really is none. What it's about is muscle flexing and knocking someone down to the ground in an attempt to show where the real power lies, big corps. You may think that's justifiable, but it's not the intent of the law.
In that respect our legal system is there to seperate the wrongdoers from the innocent.
The civil system is never inteded to stop "wrongdoers" that's what our criminal legal system is for. This is not an issue of right vs. wrong like people are trying to make it out to be. It's an issue of monetary damage.
But passing around trade secrets and copyrighted material over p2p networks is hard to argue the lack of guilt.
The "trade secrets" involved were shared with thousands of other people, and will become public knowledge within a few months. There's no source code theft here. Not a very secret trade secret. You keep talking about "guilt" as if it's the ultimate deciding factor of ruining someone financially. The case is about damage and liability. Guilt is a term associated with criminal courts.
Sadly, you're correct. Corporations are like a charging bull that can't be defended against unless you happen to be a bull yourself. That's actually the problem I'm pointing out. Corporations have far too much control over everyone. In a world full of angry bulls, why do we allow them to roam free around the world maming whomever can't defend themselves?
Almost 40 years ago the supreme court ruled that poor people are entitled to a public defender in criminal cases brought against them because the constitution guaranteed a fair trial. I find the power that corps have to sue individuals very similar to that situation, though I'm not exactly certain if the constitution was ever intended to protect individuals from corps.
I understand it plenty.
From your own statements, I don't think you do. You've already decided that a lawyer will cost him more than it'll save him... before Apple has even declared what they're seeking.
The amount of damages is in the award of the judge.
Which is based on what the plaintiff argues. With no lawyer to defend you, Apple is free to make up essentially whatever frivolous charges they want. There's a LONG standing tradition of companies just making up numbers to make it look like a big case, and then hope it sticks.
He doesn't need to defend himself. He actually did everything he was accused of. Hiring a lawyer is simply throwing good money away.
You obviously don't understand the civil system. This isn't about guilt or innocense, it's about damages and liability. This isn't a criminal trial where a judge/jury determines if you're innocent or guilty of a crime. This is a trial where the plaintiff says how much monetary damage they had inflicted on them, and the defendant has to defend against the amount of damage, liability for that damage, etc. The lawyer would take apart all the ridiculous "damage" claims that Apple will likely fabricate, and/or argue the defendant isn't liable for said damages.
The wealth of the litigants is completely irrelevant.
It's completely relevant. How can any person defend themselves against a multi-billion dollar corporation with teams of lawyers on salary if said corporation gets a bug up their butt? Trials are supposed to be fair (even civil trials), and this is clearly a case of unfairness. Do you really like a world where corps have the power to do whatever they want to individuals because they can sue you into oblivion?
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
Actually it's not a crime, and there is no "time". This is a civil matter.
Why is the big mantra on slashdot "this guy is stupid!", as if this is the ultimate sin? I guess "stupid" people don't deserve anything but contempt. Calling someone stupid is the new kike/nigger/dago/wop/chink/gook/raghead/fag/guinea /kraut.
Did I leave anyone out?
This is clearly a case of a massive corporation against a lone individual. His age is irrelevant. What is relevant is that he has no means to defend himself against a multi-billion dollar corporation with an axe to grind, and that his intent wasn't malicious.
This is a civil matter, so there's no jail involved. However, why should Apple computer be able to ruin someones life through financial means just because they have multi-billions of dollars and he has.. well probbably almost nothing? I'm sure Apple will trump up millions of dollars worth of "damages" in a miss-guided attempt at "sending a message". In this case Microsoft is actually the better company. How many times have pre-releases of windows been leaked, but yet they've never gone out on the warpath with big lawsuits?
ClamAV relies on an external program to open RAR archives. Presumably this will work in windows as well, but I don't know if there's a command-line compatible version of unrar that'll work in windows. Perhaps cygwin supplies such a beast.
The OSS program ClamAV supports scanning of RAR files. If most anti-virus programs truly don't support RAR format, this is another big win for ClamAV. (I run it on my own server, and as part of an anti spam/virus email service and it runs flawlessly).
Mars isn't flat, and the area of the sea surely isn't square, but a very rough estimation of the volume would be: 800,000 meters * 900,000 meters * 45 meters = 32,400,000,000,000 cubic meters = 8,559,174,460,226,494 gallons or in words 8.6 quadrillion gallons or 32.4 quadrillion liters.