The best advice above has been that you should have an attorney look at the contract and that any employer that won't accept reasonable modifications to that contract is going to be a problem to work for anyway.
But as to the practical matter of actually finding that attorney who specializes in such things and will help you out for a reasonable price, here's what to do: Look up your local Bar Association. They likely have a lawyer referral service that gets you a 30-minute consultation with an attorney for $25. Additional time negotiable. The link goes to such a program in Alameda County California, but you can find your own local association at the American Bar Association's website.
If you think they are in violation of the GPL, then you should read the advice on FSF's site and if you've already followed all their suggestions, then send the documentation you have of the problem to license-violation@gnu.org.
Sigma cannot satisfy Section 3 of the GPL by simply providing the source on the internet. They must be prepared to provide it by mail as well, if requested by someone who received the binary. See: GPL FAQ.
In large part what drives touch-screen voting is Disability issues. Consider the following:
1. Every voter should vote without assistance. This helps prevent coerced voting and preserves privacy.
2. A voter who is blind cannot usually vote with paper and pencil without assistance.
3. Touch-screens have earphones that can be plugged in to assist the voter who is blind vote independently.
This does not mean I like touch-screens. The hybrid systems others have described where the touch-screen then prints an optical scan ballot has some advantages. The optical scanner can also have earphones so that a voter who is blind can confirm their card was printed correctly. (It should have a visible display as well.)
Even better, the optical scanner should, by law, be required to be manufactured and sold by a different company than the company making the touch-screen system. This produces an extra check in the system, so that, for instance, a single company cannot have touch-screens that appear to print a correct optical-scan form but then design a scanning device that systematically misreads the printed forms.
Finally, the printed optical-scan form is deposited in a locked box and is used as the official count in hand-counted recounts.
Don't forget that even with the above, the source code for all software used in these machines must be inspected in advance. Further, the source code of the compiler used must be available because back-doors can be introduced into clean code at the compilation stage. (This is not theoretical. It's been done.) The compilation process should be observed by some supervisory committee.
Then a simple thing like the actual security of the machines must be insured. In many places the machines are dropped off the night before at the church, community center, or firehouse and all manner of people have physical access to the machines for twelve hours over-night. Unacceptable. I'm not sure what the man-power solution is to this problem, but it should be a priority, because all the above is for nought if someone has that much time alone with the machines just prior to voting.
Finally, clear procedures have to be established for power outages, reboots, etc. and poll-workers have to be trained on the law and these procedures so that Mr. Nice Repairman cannot whisk the machines away for a few hours and then bring them back. Incomprehensible!
I couldn't find another way to contact you, but I'm also a 1L (at Boalt Hall) and also into Tech/IP Law.
There should be some sort of national organization of Public-Interest-Minded Tech/IP Law students. Or at least a forum for us to chat. Maybe a blog where any member could post. I'm just thinking out loud here, but contact me at brianwc at boalthall dot berkeley dot edu if interested.
I typically use Yahoo! maps, but sometimes (like rush hour) I want a route that will avoid major freeways. I may be oblivious to other alternatives, but I've only found this feature at switchboard.com (which actually takes you to mapsonus.com, a service of switchboard, but anyway...)
You can also tell it to Favor Major Freeways if you need that for some reason.
Here at Slashdot many are avid supporters of Free and Open Source Software. Will you promise right now that, if elected, you will make it mandatory that every state software purchase occur only after Free and Open Source software alternatives have been adequately considered?
Second, will you promise to hire a team of at least 50 Debian developers, declaring Debian GNU/Linux the Official Operating System of California?
Finally, if Bush is re-elected, will you look into secession for California?
No, I don't work for them, but Linuxcare has a professional looking website using the CEO-lingo that might comfort the big-wigs you need to convince. There are other companies that support Free Software too, check out Red Hat's Support Services. A site called OpenEnterprise looks to have a ton of resources on exactly what you're asking for.
Also, take a look at IT Management's special report on Linux. It offers a lot of ammo to you in making a presentation. You can point to the other heavy-hitters that are using Free solutions and have concrete examples of success.
Mozilla 1.2.1 crashed three times for me while trying to read that article and get back here. I have Java and Flash installed. Perhaps if others give more details we can narrow down a cause.
In today's NY Times article "6 Retailers Plan Venture to Sell Music on the Web" Laura M. Holson writes, "a proliferation of free music-swapping services on the Internet has led to a decline in CD sales."
Ms. Holmes has either succumbed to the incessant propaganda of the big music labels or has an insight into global economic causal relations that would make even Chairman Greenspan envious.
During the same time period that peer-to-peer file-sharing networks have been active, several other factors have existed that seem as likely or more likely to explain the recent decline in CD sales.
1. The music industry has consolidated to such an extent that many radio stations sound exactly alike, reducing consumer choice and interest.
2. The music industry focuses almost all its promotional efforts on a few super-artists who have a chance to sell millions of records (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Boy Bands, etc.) and so non-mainstream or non-teen-pop artists that would interest people over age 25 (with purchasing power) do not get the exposure necessary to attract new fans.
3. Consumers have more products competing for their limited dollars than ever before. DVDs, wireless phones, digital cable, broadband internet, PDAs and a host of other things soak up time and money that used to be spent listening to music and buying CDs.
4. The music labels over-charge for their products (and were even recently convicted of illegal price-fixing and they have not offered a reasonably priced alternative to file-sharing networks that does not cripple the downloads in some way (limited playbacks, unable to burn to CD, expires after a set time, etc.) It's not surprising then that when consumers don't get what they want, they don't shell out their hard-earned cash.
5. There is an overall slowdown in the economy, if no one has noticed.
None of the articles gave a name for this thing yet.
So, here we have it...
Slashdot's own Name that New Dinosaur Contest:
1. Glideasaurus
2. GNAB (GNAB's not a bird)
3. Quadrofoil
4. I don't have a name yet you Insensitive Clodasaurus.
5. Fakeoraptor
6. Cowboydactyl Nealasaurus.
So Cable Companies have decided once again to use their monopoly power to stifle innovation that would benefit the consumer. Big surprise. But my question is:
What can they do to stop PVRs?
As PVR software increases in functionality, anyone will be able to turn an old desktop with a new 80GB hard drive from Best Buy into a PVR. The cable companies can kill Tivo and ReplayTV but they can't stop independent PVR software like Freevo. Admittedly, there isn't software out there yet that is as good as Tivo's, but especially if PVRs come under serious attack, it'll get there.
All I can figure they could do is use something like CSS to scramble the signal and prevent any digital recording. But, we've seen how well scrambling works, so a new DeCSS will just come along and we'll be back in another DMCA debate. This time though we'd have a really sympathetic defendant. Their position would be, "My cable company killed my Tivo, so I just tried to get back the ability I had a few months ago. My VCR was legal, so my PVR should be too." It's a lot easier for Congress and the average person to understand that argument than it is to explain to them Dmitry's Elcomsoft case or what DeCSS is and why they should care...
So, can someone think of something else the Cable Companies can realistically do to stop PVRs? Isn't it another case of trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube?
It seems that what's really irresponsible is not what Bugtraq did, but running IE to begin with. It's history of security flaws and exploits along with Microsoft's foot-dragging responses make it utterly irresponsible to run such software.
That said, no one is immune from security exploits. The argument for posting it to Bugtraq seems mainly to be that this motivates the vendor to move quickly now that their customers know about the exploit and now that nefarious types have easier access to it. (Don't fool yourself into thinking the most malicious types didn't usually already acquire it by other means.)
But if what we really want to do is motivate vendors to patch things quickly, it should be the first rule of Bugtraq that no exploit is posted until the vendor is informed. Most linux security exploits are resolved within about 48 hours, while it is true that Microsoft often takes weeks or months. Given our competing interests in both informing the vendor privately and getting information to the public, we should balance these in a reasonable way. One such solution might be that Bugtraq adopt a rule that after a vendor is informed, they have 48-72 hours after which time it will be posted.
For both the responsible vendors and the free software community this approach would balance our interests in minimizing exploits while a solution is actively pursued while also acknowledging the benefits of full public disclosure.
In the case of smaller vendors than MS who might not have the resources for such a quick bug-fix, an appeal process could be instituted wherein the vendor may contact Bugtraq during the initial grace period and request an extension. Guidelines based on the resources of the vendor and the seriousness of the bug could be used to determine whether another 48-72 hours should be granted.
Get me one of these that is Zaurus-like (based on linux) and is also a cell-phone and also has voice-recognition software that works (who wants to tap a stylus on a tiny little watch face??) and THEN I'll really be excited...
I was half-way through the checkout process at debrand.com, buying some nice chocolates to help support these guys in their fight. Then I noticed on the page where I'd put my credit card number...It's not encrypted. I sent them an e-mail about this and hopefully it'll be fixed soon. Just a warning to those who have also had the good idea that we can support them and score points with the wife/girlfriend/mom/grandmom/etc. at the same time!
From what I read of the decision (yes, I tried to wade through a significant chunk of its hundreds of pages) Judge KK seems to justify many of her points by saying that the remedies suggested by the dissenting states do not address the fault that was established. That is, for instance, forcing MS to auction the rights to port Office to Linux has nothing to do with the fact that MS used its monopoly power to squash Netscape, etc. That is, anything not directly related to the theory that MS felt a threat from middleware with cross-platform abilities is out of bounds as a remedy. (First question then might be: Is that an accurate description of part of her reasoning?) In some instances, what she says sounds right to me and in others it seems like she needs to re-read the findings of fact.
Another reason she seems to like for rejecting proposed remedies is that they would "help MS's competitors but not competition". This distinction seems slim. If that really is required of any anti-trust remedy, then is anything other than breaking MS up even a potential remedy?
Most importantly, given the narrow ways she uses to reject the proposed additional remedies, didn't she leave open the possibility of the success of a brand new anti-trust suit that does address the other ways in which MS has abused its monopoly power? (Like for instance, wouldn't Sun's additional anti-trust suit have a good chance?) But, given how long these trials take, won't Microsoft's strategy of prolonging the process wind us right back where we are, where any remedy applied so long after the fact makes no real difference? And then if that's so, while her remedy might be legally defensible, it would also serve to graphically illustrate the impotence of our anti-trust laws, no?
A few comments seem excited by the restrictions this places on Microsoft's relationships with OEMs. This is not news. That was part of the settlement MS reached with the Justice Dept. The 9 states were unsatisified with that settlement and were arguing for further penalties like making the code to IE open source, forcing MS to sell a company the rights to port Office to Linux, separating out IE from the Windows OS, and many other things.
The point is that the 9 states seem to have got NONE of the things they wanted. Microsoft Wins and wins BIG.
I'm not sure many of you would be as happy about those OEM restrictions the order talks about if you were more familiar with the history of this case. Those things were a baseline given.
We should now start taking bets on the demise of RealNetworks. Windows Media Player will be further incorporated into the OS now and just as they did with IE, they'll gain monopoly power in another software niche.
P.S. It seems to me the seller of the camera/PDA must have mailed the thing somewhere. Get that address. Contact local police. Contact EBay's fraud division. ETC. I'd be surprised if this money cannot be recovered. In the meantime, I hope Abiword is busy setting up a C2it account.
Slashdot Mirror
The best advice above has been that you should have an attorney look at the contract and that any employer that won't accept reasonable modifications to that contract is going to be a problem to work for anyway.
But as to the practical matter of actually finding that attorney who specializes in such things and will help you out for a reasonable price, here's what to do: Look up your local Bar Association. They likely have a lawyer referral service that gets you a 30-minute consultation with an attorney for $25. Additional time negotiable. The link goes to such a program in Alameda County California, but you can find your own local association at the American Bar Association's website.
And God answers only to Philosophers. or better... And God answers only to those with auditory delusions.
If you think they are in violation of the GPL, then you should read the advice on FSF's site and if you've already followed all their suggestions, then send the documentation you have of the problem to license-violation@gnu.org.
Sigma cannot satisfy Section 3 of the GPL by simply providing the source on the internet. They must be prepared to provide it by mail as well, if requested by someone who received the binary. See: GPL FAQ.
Where do you buy 4000+ SuperBalls and what does it cost?
Imagining these guys sitting around and thinking this up is not so hard:
"Dude. What if we dropped like a gillion SuperBalls at once."
"Yeah. That would rock."
But that they then followed through and figured out how to pull this off is much more impressive.
In large part what drives touch-screen voting is Disability issues. Consider the following:
1. Every voter should vote without assistance. This helps prevent coerced voting and preserves privacy.
2. A voter who is blind cannot usually vote with paper and pencil without assistance.
3. Touch-screens have earphones that can be plugged in to assist the voter who is blind vote independently.
This does not mean I like touch-screens. The hybrid systems others have described where the touch-screen then prints an optical scan ballot has some advantages. The optical scanner can also have earphones so that a voter who is blind can confirm their card was printed correctly. (It should have a visible display as well.)
Even better, the optical scanner should, by law, be required to be manufactured and sold by a different company than the company making the touch-screen system. This produces an extra check in the system, so that, for instance, a single company cannot have touch-screens that appear to print a correct optical-scan form but then design a scanning device that systematically misreads the printed forms.
Finally, the printed optical-scan form is deposited in a locked box and is used as the official count in hand-counted recounts.
Don't forget that even with the above, the source code for all software used in these machines must be inspected in advance. Further, the source code of the compiler used must be available because back-doors can be introduced into clean code at the compilation stage. (This is not theoretical. It's been done.) The compilation process should be observed by some supervisory committee.
Then a simple thing like the actual security of the machines must be insured. In many places the machines are dropped off the night before at the church, community center, or firehouse and all manner of people have physical access to the machines for twelve hours over-night. Unacceptable. I'm not sure what the man-power solution is to this problem, but it should be a priority, because all the above is for nought if someone has that much time alone with the machines just prior to voting.
Finally, clear procedures have to be established for power outages, reboots, etc. and poll-workers have to be trained on the law and these procedures so that Mr. Nice Repairman cannot whisk the machines away for a few hours and then bring them back. Incomprehensible!
Brian
It's pretty obvious what should happen, isn't it?
Apple should hire this guy!
Can't you just see Steve Jobs on stage with him at a Mac conference telling the crowd,
"At Apple, we'll never fire you for liking Macs."
[The crowd goes wild!]
It's a PR dream come true.
Brian
Hey cfulmer,
I couldn't find another way to contact you, but I'm also a 1L (at Boalt Hall) and also into Tech/IP Law.
There should be some sort of national organization of Public-Interest-Minded Tech/IP Law students. Or at least a forum for us to chat. Maybe a blog where any member could post. I'm just thinking out loud here, but contact me at brianwc at boalthall dot berkeley dot edu if interested.
Brian
I typically use Yahoo! maps, but sometimes (like rush hour) I want a route that will avoid major freeways. I may be oblivious to other alternatives, but I've only found this feature at switchboard.com (which actually takes you to mapsonus.com, a service of switchboard, but anyway...)
You can also tell it to Favor Major Freeways if you need that for some reason.
This simply means it is time for more people to contribute to the following Open Source BIOS projects:
See: LinuxBIOS and
Open BIOS.
Also of interest is this announcement of an Open Source BIOS that successfully booted Windows 2000. (It also boots Linux and OpenBSD.) This was in November of 2002, so there may have been more progress since. They also got help from the bochs project.
Sign up to help these teams today!
Here at Slashdot many are avid supporters of Free and Open Source Software. Will you promise right now that, if elected, you will make it mandatory that every state software purchase occur only after Free and Open Source software alternatives have been adequately considered?
Second, will you promise to hire a team of at least 50 Debian developers, declaring Debian GNU/Linux the Official Operating System of California?
Finally, if Bush is re-elected, will you look into secession for California?
No, I don't work for them, but Linuxcare has a professional looking website using the CEO-lingo that might comfort the big-wigs you need to convince. There are other companies that support Free Software too, check out Red Hat's Support Services. A site called OpenEnterprise looks to have a ton of resources on exactly what you're asking for.
Also, take a look at IT Management's special report on Linux. It offers a lot of ammo to you in making a presentation. You can point to the other heavy-hitters that are using Free solutions and have concrete examples of success.
The same site even has an article entitled Selling the 'Suits' on your IT project which looks to have some good advice for you.
Here are some photos from The Gathering 2002.
Of course, this guy put sooooo many thumbnails on this one page that Slashdot will likely kill this after five seconds.
Mozilla 1.2.1 crashed three times for me while trying to read that article and get back here. I have Java and Flash installed. Perhaps if others give more details we can narrow down a cause.
BWC
In today's NY Times article "6 Retailers Plan Venture to Sell Music on the Web" Laura M. Holson writes, "a proliferation of free music-swapping services on the Internet has led to a decline in CD sales."
Ms. Holmes has either succumbed to the incessant propaganda of the big music labels or has an insight into global economic causal relations that would make even Chairman Greenspan envious.
During the same time period that peer-to-peer file-sharing networks have been active, several other factors have existed that seem as likely or more likely to explain the recent decline in CD sales.
1. The music industry has consolidated to such an extent that many radio stations sound exactly alike, reducing consumer choice and interest.
2. The music industry focuses almost all its promotional efforts on a few super-artists who have a chance to sell millions of records (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Boy Bands, etc.) and so non-mainstream or non-teen-pop artists that would interest people over age 25 (with purchasing power) do not get the exposure necessary to attract new fans.
3. Consumers have more products competing for their limited dollars than ever before. DVDs, wireless phones, digital cable, broadband internet, PDAs and a host of other things soak up time and money that used to be spent listening to music and buying CDs.
4. The music labels over-charge for their products (and were even recently convicted of illegal price-fixing and they have not offered a reasonably priced alternative to file-sharing networks that does not cripple the downloads in some way (limited playbacks, unable to burn to CD, expires after a set time, etc.) It's not surprising then that when consumers don't get what they want, they don't shell out their hard-earned cash.
5. There is an overall slowdown in the economy, if no one has noticed.
In response, consider instead that:
1. Jupiter Communications did a study in 2000 at the height of Napster usage that showed Napster users bought MORE not FEWER CDs.
2. Actual artists claim that file-sharing increases their sales.
I would have hoped that a reporter for The New York Times would be more careful about so casually asigning a single cause to such a complex effect.
[snip personal info]
If published, please print name and city/state only.
Oops, finally found the name. I still think we can do better.
BWC
None of the articles gave a name for this thing yet.
So, here we have it...
Slashdot's own Name that New Dinosaur Contest:
1. Glideasaurus
2. GNAB (GNAB's not a bird)
3. Quadrofoil
4. I don't have a name yet you Insensitive Clodasaurus.
5. Fakeoraptor
6. Cowboydactyl Nealasaurus.
BWC
So Cable Companies have decided once again to use their monopoly power to stifle innovation that would benefit the consumer. Big surprise. But my question is:
What can they do to stop PVRs?
As PVR software increases in functionality, anyone will be able to turn an old desktop with a new 80GB hard drive from Best Buy into a PVR. The cable companies can kill Tivo and ReplayTV but they can't stop independent PVR software like Freevo. Admittedly, there isn't software out there yet that is as good as Tivo's, but especially if PVRs come under serious attack, it'll get there.
All I can figure they could do is use something like CSS to scramble the signal and prevent any digital recording. But, we've seen how well scrambling works, so a new DeCSS will just come along and we'll be back in another DMCA debate. This time though we'd have a really sympathetic defendant. Their position would be, "My cable company killed my Tivo, so I just tried to get back the ability I had a few months ago. My VCR was legal, so my PVR should be too." It's a lot easier for Congress and the average person to understand that argument than it is to explain to them Dmitry's Elcomsoft case or what DeCSS is and why they should care...
So, can someone think of something else the Cable Companies can realistically do to stop PVRs? Isn't it another case of trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube?
BC
It seems that what's really irresponsible is not what Bugtraq did, but running IE to begin with. It's history of security flaws and exploits along with Microsoft's foot-dragging responses make it utterly irresponsible to run such software.
That said, no one is immune from security exploits. The argument for posting it to Bugtraq seems mainly to be that this motivates the vendor to move quickly now that their customers know about the exploit and now that nefarious types have easier access to it. (Don't fool yourself into thinking the most malicious types didn't usually already acquire it by other means.)
But if what we really want to do is motivate vendors to patch things quickly, it should be the first rule of Bugtraq that no exploit is posted until the vendor is informed. Most linux security exploits are resolved within about 48 hours, while it is true that Microsoft often takes weeks or months. Given our competing interests in both informing the vendor privately and getting information to the public, we should balance these in a reasonable way. One such solution might be that Bugtraq adopt a rule that after a vendor is informed, they have 48-72 hours after which time it will be posted.
For both the responsible vendors and the free software community this approach would balance our interests in minimizing exploits while a solution is actively pursued while also acknowledging the benefits of full public disclosure.
In the case of smaller vendors than MS who might not have the resources for such a quick bug-fix, an appeal process could be instituted wherein the vendor may contact Bugtraq during the initial grace period and request an extension. Guidelines based on the resources of the vendor and the seriousness of the bug could be used to determine whether another 48-72 hours should be granted.
BWCarver
Get me one of these that is Zaurus-like (based on linux) and is also a cell-phone and also has voice-recognition software that works (who wants to tap a stylus on a tiny little watch face??) and THEN I'll really be excited...
BWCarver
I was half-way through the checkout process at debrand.com, buying some nice chocolates to help support these guys in their fight. Then I noticed on the page where I'd put my credit card number...It's not encrypted. I sent them an e-mail about this and hopefully it'll be fixed soon. Just a warning to those who have also had the good idea that we can support them and score points with the wife/girlfriend/mom/grandmom/etc. at the same time!
From what I read of the decision (yes, I tried to wade through a significant chunk of its hundreds of pages) Judge KK seems to justify many of her points by saying that the remedies suggested by the dissenting states do not address the fault that was established. That is, for instance, forcing MS to auction the rights to port Office to Linux has nothing to do with the fact that MS used its monopoly power to squash Netscape, etc. That is, anything not directly related to the theory that MS felt a threat from middleware with cross-platform abilities is out of bounds as a remedy. (First question then might be: Is that an accurate description of part of her reasoning?) In some instances, what she says sounds right to me and in others it seems like she needs to re-read the findings of fact.
Another reason she seems to like for rejecting proposed remedies is that they would "help MS's competitors but not competition". This distinction seems slim. If that really is required of any anti-trust remedy, then is anything other than breaking MS up even a potential remedy?
Most importantly, given the narrow ways she uses to reject the proposed additional remedies, didn't she leave open the possibility of the success of a brand new anti-trust suit that does address the other ways in which MS has abused its monopoly power? (Like for instance, wouldn't Sun's additional anti-trust suit have a good chance?) But, given how long these trials take, won't Microsoft's strategy of prolonging the process wind us right back where we are, where any remedy applied so long after the fact makes no real difference? And then if that's so, while her remedy might be legally defensible, it would also serve to graphically illustrate the impotence of our anti-trust laws, no?
BWCarver
A few comments seem excited by the restrictions this places on Microsoft's relationships with OEMs. This is not news. That was part of the settlement MS reached with the Justice Dept. The 9 states were unsatisified with that settlement and were arguing for further penalties like making the code to IE open source, forcing MS to sell a company the rights to port Office to Linux, separating out IE from the Windows OS, and many other things.
The point is that the 9 states seem to have got NONE of the things they wanted. Microsoft Wins and wins BIG.
I'm not sure many of you would be as happy about those OEM restrictions the order talks about if you were more familiar with the history of this case. Those things were a baseline given.
We should now start taking bets on the demise of RealNetworks. Windows Media Player will be further incorporated into the OS now and just as they did with IE, they'll gain monopoly power in another software niche.
BWCarver
If you want to know who she is, then follow this link.
C'mon you don't watch Junkyard Wars?!?
To close your paypal account follow that link. I just closed mine.
Then send them an e-mail explaining why. I'm going to now.
P.S. It seems to me the seller of the camera/PDA must have mailed the thing somewhere. Get that address. Contact local police. Contact EBay's fraud division. ETC. I'd be surprised if this money cannot be recovered. In the meantime, I hope Abiword is busy setting up a C2it account.